The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(48)

“Mr. Needlemier,” I said. “I’m very tired and very hungry and I’m running out of time.”

“Of course. In a nutshell, there are, or were, thirteen skulls, fashioned from solid crystal sometime in the late first century. By whom and for what purpose no one seems to agree, but one legend that I thought you might find interesting—or thought you would if you were alive, because of course at the time I thought you weren’t—one legend has it that the Skulls were made by Merlin—”

“Merlin,” I echoed, remembering my dream in cabin thirteen. The old man unzipping his head and ripping out his skull. “Touch.”

“The magician. From Camelot . . .”

“I know who Merlin is, Mr. Needlemier.”

“Of course you do! You would almost have to! Carved from crystal by Merlin himself . . . including the Thirteenth, the last and most terrible of the Divining Skulls, as they were called. Merlin was so horrified by what he had fashioned that he divided the first twelve between Arthur’s bravest knights, ordering them to scatter the Skulls to the ends of the earth and to tell no one where they had hidden them. The Thirteenth, called the Skull of Doom, Merlin himself hid away—or more precisely threw away.”

“Threw away? Where did he throw it away?”

“Not where, Alfred. When. The legend says he hurled the Skull of Doom into a time warp or vortex, casting it far into the future, so far that the wizard was certain no man would still be alive to use it.”

“Why? What could it do?”

“By itself, hardly anything. It could be used much like a crystal ball—like the others, it was cut from the purest crystal—to see into the future. But the Skull’s real power came when aligned with the first twelve. You see, if the twelve were arranged in a circle, with the thirteenth in the middle, all time and space could—or most definitely would, according to some—be literally ripped apart.”

I thought about that. “The end of the world.”

“No, of everything. The entire universe.”

“No wonder Merlin ordered them scattered.”

“Yes. And no wonder that Jourdain might know of them. His father was, after all, a Knight of the Sacred Order.”

“He went to Suedberg,” I said.

“Suedberg?”

“This little town in Pennsylvania where one of the knights lived—or used to live before Mogart’s men killed him. But his mother is still there—and she’s a soothsayer. She can see the future.”

“Perhaps with the help of a special crystalline object designed for that purpose?”

“Maybe,” I said. It was hard to think it through. I was hungry and tired and still chilled to the bone. “I stayed in that house and never saw any crystal skull, but it wasn’t like I searched the place.”

“No doubt Jourdain has, though.”

“But it still doesn’t add up. Unless Jourdain thinks I knew where the Thirteenth Skull was—which I don’t—and besides he didn’t even give me a chance to tell him one way or another. Nueve swooped in right before he was going to chop off my head.”

“He didn’t ask you where it was?”

“He just said he was on the ‘last knightly quest,’ ” I said. “That must be why Sam’s so bent on finding him. If anyone would know about some magical crystal skull, it would be the Operative Nine for OIPEP.”

I made him repeat Samuel’s cell number one last time before hanging up. I dialed the number and got a very stern recorded message from the phone company that I needed to deposit three dollars before making my call.

In the restaurant, Ashley was working on a sloppy hamburger about the size of my head, a plateful of fries buried under globs of ketchup, and a big bowl of baked beans.

“I ordered,” she said unnecessarily. “I couldn’t wait any longer. Lemme guess: the director is ‘indisposed.’ ”

“I’ve got a feeling something bad has happened.”

She laughed. “I wonder why.”

“I’m thinking the board said ‘no.’ ”

“Well, my guess would be it’s not going too well.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “All this time I thought the director was in charge of OIPEP.”

“We call OIPEP the ‘Company’ for a reason, Alfred. It’s set up like a multinational corporation. Countries who’ve signed the Charter send representatives to sit on the board. The board sets the policies and selects a director to implement them and run the day-to-day operations. But any decision the director makes can be overturned by a simple majority vote of the board.”

“Do you think she can convince them to leave me alone?”

“She hasn’t been able to so far.”

The server came by to take my order. I ordered a grilled chicken salad and a glass of ice water.

Ashley took a big pull on her chocolate shake and said, “Salad?”

“My tummy feels funny.”

“Did you just use the word ‘tummy’?”

I looked around the room. A man was sitting by himself, talking on a cell phone in a loud voice. Something about the meeting in Denver and what a slam dunk the presentation was. A frazzled-looking woman sat in a booth wrangling two toddlers fighting over a red crayon, their faces smeared with what looked like mashed potatoes. Another man sat at the bar wearing blue jeans and a buckskin shirt with the leather danglies on the sleeves.