The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(21)

I heard chairs scraping across a wooden floor. Whispers. A stifled laugh.

Then someone said, “He’s awake.”

Someone else said, “Open your eyes, Alfred Kropp.”

I did, but only because I knew I’d have to eventually.

Propped up in a straight-backed wooden chair with my hands still cuffed behind my back, I was sitting in the middle of a huge room, the ceiling at least two stories above my head, the walls lost in murky shadow. Detecting the distinct odor of coffee, I wondered if they had taken me to the old JFG warehouse at the edge of the Old City.

“Behold, the last in the line of Lancelot!”

The speaker was leaning against the edge of a table a couple of feet in front of me. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Slender. I’d never seen him before, but his face looked vaguely familiar. Like Vosch and his buddies, he spoke with a faint French accent.

“It seems fitting somehow,” he went on. “That you would meet your fate dressed like an old woman!”

“That wasn’t my idea,” I gasped. I had a horrible headache from the knock in the car.

“I am not surprised,” he said. “That would be like drawing water from a dry well.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but figured he was calling me stupid. I squinted up at his face, at the aristocratic nose and sharp chin. Why did he look so familiar? I dropped my bucket into the well, trying to figure it out.

“If you have any lingering hopes of rescue, I would suggest you abandon them now,” he said. “We’ve taken extraordinary measures to ensure you were not followed.”

We. The shadow of a man hovered near one of the tall, narrow windows. Vosch? Where were the driver and the guy who bopped me on the head? I held my breath and listened.

Someone coughed directly behind me and I thought I heard shoes shuffle on the hardwood to my left. At least four, counting the guy in front of me.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“I could take a stab at it,” I said.

“Stab.”

Age: twenty-two. Citizenry: French. Marital status: single. Occupation: president and chief executive officer of Tintagel International . . .

“You’re Jourdain Garmot.”

He laughed softly like I had said something funny.

“I said it was a stab,” I said.

“I didn’t ask if you knew my name; I asked if you knew who I am.”

“You’re the boss at Tintagel International,” I said. “And you’ve been trying very hard to kill me.”

He nodded slowly. “Which has proved more difficult than I anticipated.”

“You had your chance in the Town Car.”

“I’ve decided to let you live a little while longer.”

“Not that I’m ungrateful or anything, but why?”

He smiled. There was something familiar about that smile, though I couldn’t put a finger on it. And his name. Garmot. Why did that seem familiar too? Gar-mot. GAR-mot.Gar-MOT. What was it?

“A selfish desire on my part,” he answered. “I wanted to meet you—and naturally I wanted you to meet me.”

He walked around to the other side of the table and sat down.

“And that brings us back to my original question, Alfred Kropp. Do you know who I am?”

Garmot. G-A-R-M-O-T.

“I told you what I know,” I said.

His dark eyes glittered in the weak light streaming through the high windows. He nodded to someone behind me and Vosch appeared carrying a black case about the size of a bowling bag. He set it on the table between me and Garmot and melted back into the shadows.

“What’s in that bag?” I asked.

Garmot didn’t answer. Instead he asked very slowly and deliberately, “Who ... am ... I?”

Garmot. Gar-mo. Gar-gar-mot-mot. Mot-mot-gar-gar. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

He stood up and now in his right hand he held a black sword. I had seen a sword just like it before. In fact, I owned one just like it. Tightly cuffed, my hands twisted uselessly behind my back as he came toward me, and all I could think was How did he get my sword?

“Perhaps some context would help,” he said.

“That’d be great,” I gasped. “Anything helpful would help.”

“For we are not so different, you and I. We are both— how shall I say it?—reluctant players in a game not of our choosing. A mere two years ago we were living quite normal lives. You here in America and I in France. Both normal students in normal towns going about our normal lives. Until our normal lives were ripped away, yes?”

He leaned against the table, dropping the sword point between his spread legs and spinning it. Light raced up and down its length and sparked off the dragon’s head embossed on the hilt.

Garmot. Gar-Gar. Gra-Gra. Mot-Mot. Mar-Mar. Mart? Marty . . . Marty-Gra . . . ?

“Like you, I resisted,” he said. “I refused to play. I wanted a normal life. And until someone very close to me was murdered, I thought—I had every reason to believe—I would have that life. As did you, I am sure.”

“I still want that,” I said. “That’s all I want.”

“Irrelevant,” Jourdain Garmot said. “We have no choice now but to see the game to its bitter end. Bitter for you, of course, since you will not survive this day. But bitter for me, as well, for killing you will not mend my broken heart or return my beloved friend to me.”