The Seal of Solomon (Alfred Kropp #2)(15)

“Correct.”

“Or else . . . ? ”

“Catastrophe.”

A bell went off, a blaring sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Op Nine checked his watch.

“It’s time for the briefing,” he said to Abigail.

She nodded, then turned to me and gave my shoulder a little pat.

“We have to go, Alfred.”

“When are you taking me home?”

They both looked away.

“You’re not taking me home, are you?” I asked.

“You’ll be safe here, Alfred,” Abby said.

“I’d rather go home and take my chances.”

Abby was looking at Op Nine. She pursed her fat red lips and for some reason I thought of goldfish, those big koi you see sometimes in little ponds outside Japanese restaurants.

He said, “Perhaps we will discuss it, once the Seals have been recovered.”

They left, slamming the big round metal door closed behind them. The wheel turned and I heard a clanking sound, like a dead bolt sliding home. It hit me then that I had traded one kidnapper for another. OIPEP might not want to kill me like Mike did, but I was at their mercy just the same.

12

I don’t know how long I lay there, waiting for them to come back. It seemed a very long time. There was really nothing to do, no magazines or books or a television or a radio, and I still felt light-headed and kind of hollow, like a scooped-out pumpkin. After a while I drifted off to sleep. When there’s nothing to do, I sleep. I’m like a dog that way.

I had a horrible dream. First I was swimming, which wasn’t so horrible, since I couldn’t swim in real life. The sun burned high overhead, the waves rolled gently over my bare back, and the warm water seemed to buoy me up so swimming took hardly any effort. I was in the middle of the ocean, no shore in sight, and the water was this deep forest green and smelled rich, like fertile soil. Then I dived beneath the surface and things started to get freaky. I morphed into this scale-less fish, big-headed, with grayish skin, a white underbelly like a catfish, and a toothless mouth. I changed into this fish, and then I started to grow.

I grew till I was about the size of a whale shark, this gray and white behemoth of the sea, gulping hundreds of gallons into my wide, toothless mouth and shooting them out through my gills. I felt something pricking my fish-skin: hundreds of little silvery fish with suckers for mouths were attaching themselves to me as I swam. More and more of the little sucker fish appeared out of the depths and latched on to me, until thousands carpeted every inch, and I could feel them sucking the life out of me. I began to sink deeper and deeper as my life force waned, and the water began to turn black and very cold.

I shivered. I’m not sure fish are capable of shivering, but in this dream anything seemed possible, even something like a white-bellied Kropp Fish.

I woke up and I was still shivering.

The porthole was shining brightly and light reflecting off the ocean was dancing on the glass. Right beside the porthole, Op Nine leaned against the bulkhead.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“We are two hours from the insertion point,” he said.

“I love your super-secret-agent Tom Clancy lingo,” I said.

“Extreme extraction. Special Subject. Insertion point. What happens after we’re inserted into the point?”

I sat up and a wave of dizziness swept over me. Someone, probably Op Nine, since I had a feeling he had been assigned as my minder, had brought me another big glass of orange juice. I gulped it down.

“Then we have approximately six hours,” Op Nine said.

“Six hours to do what?”

“Stop the Hyena before he can unlock the Lesser Seal.”

“ ‘Hyena’?”

“Mike Arnold.”

“That’s his code name, Hyena?”

“You don’t like it? We thought it most apropos.”

“It’s okay, but my big problem with code names is why use one when everybody knows the real name?”

“Because that would offend our super-secret-agent Tom Clancy sensibilities.”

He motioned toward the foot of the bed.

“Perhaps you would like to dress before we reach Marsa Alam.”

“Huh?” I had no idea I wasn’t dressed. Then I saw I was wearing a hospital gown. Why had OIPEP stuck me in a hospital gown?

I slid out of bed and grabbed the bundle of clothes. He just stood there, staring at me with those dark eyes. I hoped he didn’t plan to stand there while I got dressed.

“Is there someplace I can maybe wash up and brush my teeth?” Running my tongue over them felt like I was licking carpet, and not the thin, worn kind in the Tuttle house, but something with a thicker pile.

“Of course. Left down the corridor, last door on the right at the terminus of the hall.”

Terminus of the hall. He didn’t have any accent that I could detect, but he talked like English was his second language. Who says “terminus of the hall”?

Op Nine opened the round door for me. I turned left, one hand pressing the clothes against my chest, the other clutching the gown closed behind me as I shuffled down the hall. In case you didn’t know, hospital gowns are open in the back with just a little drawstring to tie them, and therefore my na**d butt was flapping in the breeze. The hall was packed with agents hurrying up and down, and a few stopped and stared as I passed.