The Seal of Solomon (Alfred Kropp #2)(13)

Ashley swung around to face me, holding something that looked like a cross between a dart gun and a water pistol.

“What’s that?” I shouted.

“I’m sorry, Alfred,” she said. “I have orders.”

And before I could move, she pressed the muzzle of the thing against my upper thigh and pulled the trigger. I felt something sharp plunge into my leg, and the world went black.

PART TWO

The Infernal Hordes

—original message—

To: Aquarius

From: ChiCubsFan

Subject: Sub-Sub-Sec. Op Utopia

See attached report doc. S.S. A.K. now in Company control.

To: ChiCubsFan

From: Aquarius

Subject: Sub-Sub-Sec. Op Utopia

Unfortunate, but not necessarily world-ending.

Proceed posthaste to Nexus Point and execute Phase Three of Op Utopia. All third parties expendable. All Company personnel expendable.

Aquarius

11

Every summer when I was a little kid, my mother threw me into our old Corolla and drove us down to Destin, a beach town in the Florida Panhandle. I loved those trips. We stopped at roadside restaurants to eat, greasy spoons with the vertical coolers that held the pies and cakes, and little one-story motels two blocks from the beach, like the Seabreeze Motor Court or the Conchshell Conclave.

The Seabreeze was my favorite, mostly because the beds had this vibrator built in: you dropped a quarter into the timer and the bed would vibrate for five minutes. Two quarters got you twelve minutes. As soon as we hit the door, I flopped on one of those beds, feeding it quarters. Mom wouldn’t let me use the vibrating function at night, though. She thought the vibration while I slept would give me vertigo or bad dreams, or maybe both.

I woke with the name Destin on my lips. I could hear the low, deep-throated hum of engines, one of those sounds that seem to come from everywhere and nowhere.

I started to notice other things too, things that came in flashes as I slowly woke up.

Crisp white sheets. The smell of lavender. Gray walls lined with rivets; even the floor was riveted. A round door with a ship’s wheel for a handle. A porthole on the wall opposite the bed, nothing beyond the glass but darkness.

“Destin,” I whispered again in the semidarkness of the little cabin.

Mom in her jean shorts and halter top, sunglasses covering almost her entire face, tiny beads of sweat on her forehead, a paperback novel resting on her stomach, calling to me, Don’t go out too far, Alfred! Don’t go out too far! Because I can’t swim. She knew I wouldn’t go far: there were scary things in the ocean, jellyfish and the sharp spines of dead horseshoe crabs and busted aluminum beer cans and sharks, of course.

Swimming in the ocean is a little crazy when you think about it. The ocean is nature untamed, just like the woods, and who in their right mind would strip to their shorts and go running through the woods?

I remember wearing old bathing trunks with a starfish on the butt, faded from a bright yellow to a kind of dingy white, and a wide white stripe of sunscreen on my nose. I waded knee-deep in the languid surf of the gulf, kicking up little underwater puffs of sand, never worrying where she was, because I was sure she would always watch over me.

The wheel spun counterclockwise and the round door swung open. A big man dressed in black, with enormous ears and a face that reminded me of a bloodhound, stepped inside and looked down at me beneath the lavender-smelling sheets.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Alfred Kropp.”

“I know who you are,” he said.

“I know who you are too,” I said. “Well, not your name, but I remember you. You came to my hospital room in London. Where’s Abigail . . . I mean, Dr. Smith?”

As if on cue, Abigail Smith, Special Agent-in-Charge, Field Operations Division, of the Office of Interdimensional Paradoxes and Extraordinary Phenomena, stepped into the cabin and swung the door shut behind her.

“Hello, Alfred,” she said.

She looked just like I remembered, her bright blond hair in a tight bun. But this time her three-inch heels were replaced with black lace-up boots and she wore a black turtleneck and pants.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“Aboard the jetfoil Pandora, somewhere off the coast of Oman,” she answered.

“Oh.” I had no idea where Oman was. “Why?”

“There has been a . . . development that has necessitated your extraction from the civilian interface,” the dog-face man intoned.

“Huh?”

“What Operative Nine means is you were kidnapped for your own good, Alfred.”

“Operative Nine?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding toward Mr. Dog-Face. “Op Nine for short.”

“What’s his real name?”

“Whatever it needs to be,” Op Nine said.

Abby said, “Only the director knows his real name.”

“How come?”

“The nature of his work.”

“And that is?”

“Classified,” he said.

“That’s pretty clunky, though, Operative Nine,” I said. “Why don’t you just use a code name like ‘Bob’?”

“ ‘Bob’ would be more an alias than a code name, don’t you think?” Abigail was smiling.

“What’s going on?” I asked, struggling to sit up, but my head was throbbing and the room was spinning, and I decided sitting up wasn’t such a good idea at that moment.