The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(50)

On the third ring someone with a vaguely familiar voice came on the line.

It wasn’t Samuel’s voice.

“I believe I know who this is,” the man said in a French accent.

“Where’s Samuel?” I asked.

“Mr. St. John is indisposed,” Vosch said, echoing the OIPEP operator. “But if you’d like to leave a message, Alfred, I’d be happy to pass it along.”

I fell back against the wall and closed my eyes. I could taste the dressing from my salad and wondered if I was going to be sick.

“Is he alive?” I asked.

“He is, but of course you are not. You should have been at your funeral, Alfred. Quite touching, if ill attended.”

“You didn’t buy it.”

“It was a poor sell. Why would St. John need to protect a corpse?”

“I want to talk to him.”

“He’s indisposed. I thought we covered this.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? Maybe you’ve already killed him.”

“That would make me stupid and a liar, like a person who would fake his own death.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“You know what we want.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Excuse-moi?”

“I said I don’t have it. I never had it and I don’t know where it is.”

“Where what is?”

“The Skull. The Skull, Vosch. The Thirteenth Skull.”

He didn’t say anything at first. Then he laughed. “Ah, Alfred Kropp, you are a witty one. Tell me where you are and I shall help you locate it.”

The airport was crowded; a plane had just landed, and people were hurrying to make their connecting flights, vacationers mostly, judging by the way they were dressed. Couples and families rushing past with that flushed excitement of travel, chattering and laughing, pulling tired kids along. Where they were going, I could never come. Where they were now, I could never be. Tell me where you are.

“Outside,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“I said outside Helena, Montana. At the airport. And bring him with you, understand?”

“I’ll make the arrangements. Why don’t we break with tradition, Alfred? Stay where you are and don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Can’t promise about the stupid part.”

I went back to the restaurant and paid our check. Ashley’s eyes were red, and I wondered if she’d had herself a cry while I was gone.

“What took so long?”

“The wire hadn’t come in yet,” I lied. “I had to wait.”

We ducked into a store and bought some jeans and sweatshirts with BIG SKY printed on the fronts. I went into the men’s room to change.

Ashley gave me the eye when I came out.

“Where are the guns?” she asked.

“Tossed them in the trash,” I said. “Guns and planes don’t mix.”

“Plane to where?”

“We’re flying to Knoxville,” I lied. That was two lies in about thirty minutes. Lying in general is a bad idea, but sometimes you’re shoved between the evil of lying and the thing-that-must-be-done. I pushed that thought away; it was Op Nine thinking. In another life, you would have made a superb Superseding Protocol Agent.

“A little obvious, isn’t it?” she asked.

“That’s what I’m counting on. So obvious its obviousness makes it unobvious.”

“Nueve will have an operative at every gate, in every restaurant, probably in every public restroom. We won’t last thirty seconds in Knoxville.”

“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “I’ve got a bomb in my head and there’s only one guy who can help me get it out—the guy who ordered it put there.”

“There’re neurosurgeons in every major city in America, Alfred,” she said.

“Right, and what do I tell them? ‘Excuse me, Doc, but would you mind pulling this top-secret explosive device from between my hemispheres? It’s been bugging me.’ ”

“He’s a lot of things, but I don’t think Samuel is a brain surgeon.”

“Well, I have to start somewhere, Ashley.”

There were no direct flights to Knoxville, so we booked a connecting flight through Chicago, where we would have a two-hour layover. Since landing in Helena, I had the weird sensation of a ticker or clock inside my head, winding down like a timer to some apocalyptic event. I was familiar with apocalyptic events. This time was a little different, though. I wasn’t trying to save the world, just two people in it . . . three, if you counted Samuel. But then, as we settled into our seats at the gate, I thought no, it was just me. Not the world this time around, just Alfred.

I looked down at the top of Ashley’s head against my shoulder. She was sleeping off her burger and fries. What about Ashley? She had nowhere to go either, nowhere she would be safe from Nueve. The longer she stayed with me, the greater the danger. It wasn’t a pleasant fact, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on the pleasant ones, like the way she had looked at me in the restaurant and the way the chocolate on her lips tasted slightly salty from my bread stick. This was the time for necessities. This was the time for doing the thing-that-must-be-done.