The Seal of Solomon (Alfred Kropp #2)(39)

An old couple was sitting on the ratty sofa watching a television with a screen about the size of a postage stamp. They didn’t look up or move when we stepped out of their closet. It was like we weren’t there. It was cold in that little living room and I thought what a lousy job that would be for a super-spy, bundled up in old clothes watching television, providing cover for agents coming and going on exciting missions. Maybe they took turns taking the old-couple-just-watching-TV duty.

We stepped outside into a world of gray sky and white earth. The clouds hung low over a landscape of clapboard houses hunkered in four-foot-deep snowdrifts. Past the cluster of houses, the land was flat, featureless, a desert of ice for as far as the eye could see.

“Where are we?” I asked, pulling the hood of my parka over my head with its too-shaggy-to-be-rich haircut. There was nothing substantial in this winter wasteland to block the wind blowing directly into my face, so cold, it made my snot freeze.

“The entrance to headquarters,” he answered, which was no answer at all, of course, but what did I expect by this point? A black Land Rover idled at the end of the frozen walkway. A big man in a gray overcoat opened the back door for us and I slid in first.

We drove for about thirty minutes, first down the narrow streets that wound between the little houses, then onto a larger road, where we picked up speed, but too much speed, in my opinion, for the conditions. I looked up at the clouds and saw lightning flickering deep within their dark bellies.

At the edge of town I saw a group of kids playing soccer on a solid sheet of ice, which must make for some interesting bounces and slide tackles. I would remember them when I came to that place my father had written about, the spot between desperation and despair.

I turned to Op Nine and said, “I’ve been working on a theory that this whole thing with the Seals and the demons and OIPEP and all that is just a dream. You see it in movies and books all the time. You know, where the main character has all these awful things happen to him and then he wakes up and realizes none of it was real.”

He stared at me and didn’t say anything.

“It’s just a theory,” I said.

The kids and the soccer field without the boundary lines, which kind of made the whole world their field, were far behind us by this point. There was just gray sky, white earth, and the black ribbon of the road between the two.

“If you’re Operative Nine, what happened to the first eight operatives?” I asked.

“The ‘Nine’ doesn’t refer to a sequential number.”

“I’m no math whiz, but I thought nine was a sequential number.”

“It refers to a section of the OIPEP Charter.”

“Lemme guess. Section Nine.”

He nodded. I asked, “So what is Section Nine?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“And if you did . . .”

“I would have to kill you.”

“I think we’re really bonding here. Establishing a rapport. Have you ever had to? Kill somebody, I mean.”

“Only once. In Abkhazia.”

“Abkhazia. Ashley mentioned you were in Abkhazia.

What happened in Abkhazia—or can’t you tell me that either?” “I shouldn’t tell you.”

“It’s classified?”

“It’s painful.”

“Well, maybe you should tell me to get it off your chest. You know, to help with the bonding, since we’re partners now and everything.”

“I do not need it off my chest.”

“ ‘And we’re not partners.’ You were about to say that.”

“I was about to say Abkhazia is something you may want to hear now but would regret hearing afterward.”

“I can take it,” I said. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“Oh, you are many more things than how you appear, Alfred Kropp.”

“You’re talking about the whole Lancelot thing, I guess, and the fact that Bernard Samson is my dad. But the thing with that is it’s not anything I did. I mean, it didn’t require anything special on my part.”

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His eyelids were the color of charcoal. He must have been one of the homeliest people I had ever seen, with those long flappy earlobes, the droopy cheeks, and raccoon eyes that reminded me so much of a hound dog. But you shouldn’t judge people by appearances—the credo I lived by.

“Padre,” I said softly. Then louder: “Back in the desert, you blessed us with holy water and later on Mike called you ‘Padre’ . . .”

His eyes stayed closed. “I was a priest—once.”

“What happened?”

“My particular theological views made the church uncomfortable.”

“I guess they would,” I said. “I mean, not even the church buys into demons these days, does it?”

He didn’t answer. So I went on. “So that’s the deal with the holy water and all the Latin and praying. I haven’t been to church since my mom died. You think that’s part of it, Op Nine . . . um, Father?”

“Do not call me that, Kropp.”

“Well, what do I call you then?”

“Operative Nine.”

“No. What’s your real name?”

“Whatever it needs to be.”