The Seal of Solomon (Alfred Kropp #2)(37)

She stared at me for a long moment, a moment so long, I began to feel uncomfortable—more uncomfortable than usual—and then she leaned over quickly and kissed me on the cheek. I smelled lilacs.

She whispered in my ear, “Be careful, Alfred. They lied to you and they’ll lie again if they need to. They’re using you.”

The door sprang open at that moment and two guys rolled in a couple of carts with my comfort-food feast. Ashley pulled away quickly and she wiped away a tear.

“Good-bye, Alfred,” she said, and then walked out the door. That’s the last I saw of Ashley for a long time.

31

I wasn’t feeling so good after my meal—go figure—and, as if on cue, the door opened and the doctor came in, the same doctor from the morgue. I never got his name, so in my head I called him Dr. Watson, after Sherlock Holmes’s sidekick. I don’t know why I chose Dr. Watson, except it was the first name that popped into my head after the word “doctor.” I always thought those were two different kinds of doctors, those who worked on the living and those who worked on the dead. Maybe this doctor was both kinds, but still it made me feel a little creepy being examined by him.

He told me both bullets had been removed and he expected a full recovery. I told him, “Until the next time.” Disaster had a way of following me around, like a faithful dog. You could forgive somebody maybe once for putting the world in imminent peril. Twice was really pushing it.

“You know what a dufus is?” I asked him.

“I know what a duffer is,” he said.

“What’s a duffer?” I asked. “Isn’t that something you put on your bed?” I was getting sidetracked.

“It’s a golfing term.”

“Oh, sure. You’re a doctor. Well, a dufus is somebody who can never get anything right.”

“Very close to a duffer.”

“Maybe dufus came from duffer.”

“Oddly enough, the root word, ‘duff,’ is slang for the bu**ocks,” said Dr. Watson.

“That is odd,” I said. “Because an ass really doesn’t have that hard of a job. Just sitting and—you know. There’s one thing I’ve always wondered and maybe you could answer this, being a doctor. Why do we have a crack? I mean, what’s the necessity of the dual cheeks?”

He thought about it for a minute.

“Basically, we need them for balance.”

“Football players use them to express team spirit. I wasn’t what you could call a star athlete, but when I was playing, I got my fair share of swats back there.”

“I’m not sure I understand why we’re having a discussion about bu**ocks.”

“Well,” I said. “That isn’t my fault. But sometimes it’s better to talk about things that are not what you don’t want to talk about.”

He stared at me. I asked, “Where are we, exactly?”

“OIPEP headquarters.”

“I know that. I meant where is OIPEP headquarters?”

“I don’t think I can tell you that.”

“How come?”

“Because I can’t tell anybody that.”

He left the room and after a few minutes Op Nine came in, wearing a fur-lined parka over a tailored suit and a pair of snow boots. Ashley had been dressed for cold weather too, and I wondered if OIPEP headquarters might be at one of the poles.

“Well, Alfred, you’ve been given a clean bill of health. Or nearly clean,” he said.

“That’s like being nearly sane. Are you leaving too?”

“ ‘Too’?”

“Ashley came to see me.”

“Ah. Yes, I am leaving.”

“What about me?”

“That’s the reason I’ve come. You have a choice, Alfred. You may stay here at headquarters or you may accompany me on the hunt for the Hyena.”

“I don’t like those choices. How about I just go home to Knoxville?”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. It would not be safe.”

“I figured that was the reason. They know I’m from Knoxville, don’t they?”

“They know a great many things.”

“How many?”

He sat beside me and put one of his huge hands on my knee. “There is nothing of you that is hidden from them, Alfred. Nothing. They know you better than anyone will ever know you. They have seen your secret face, the face you hide from everyone, even from yourself. All that you know, all that you remember—even those things you cannot remember—all that you desire, even those desires you hide from yourself, has been laid bare to their eyes.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Of course, there is no safer place on earth than here at headquarters. We can protect you here. I cannot guarantee any protection should you decide to come with me.”

“So why would I decide that?”

He studied me for a long time, looking right into my eyes, but I didn’t look away. I had looked into worse eyes than his.

“Can they see my future too?”

He shook his head. “No one knows the future, Alfred, save one, and that secret is safe with him.”

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? You already know what my choice is going to be.”