The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(58)

“Necessary,” he said.

“Necessary. Right. The Operative Nine didn’t have a choice.”

“No choice,” he echoed.

“Because he’s the Operative Nine. He has to consider the inconsiderable. Think the unthinkable.”

“The unthinkable.”

“Not just the zigs—the zags too.”

“Alfred, I—” He turned around to face me.

“And it didn’t matter this Item of Special Interest was a fifteen-year-old kid.”

He went stiff on me; I was touching a raw nerve. “Your . . . gift was crucial in recovering the Seals— indispensable, in fact. If we had had access to it in previous missions, lives would have been saved, needless suffering avoided . . .”

“Previous missions? What missions? Missions like Abkhazia? Those kinds of missions, Sam?”

“Of course, yes. Of course, missions like Abkhazia.” He cleared his throat. “You have said it yourself, Alfred. An Operative Nine must think the unthinkable, consider every possible application of a Special Item, particularly those scenarios in which it might fall into unfriendly hands.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

“No, Sam, why didn’t you tell me after you left OIPEP? Why didn’t you tell me when I decided to go with Nueve?”

“Because I thought SOFIA was dead. Dr. Smith told me she killed the project when she took office as director, and I believed her.”

“I guess Nueve overruled her.”

“With the backing of the board,” he said with a nod.

“You still should have told me.”

“Yes. You’re right. I should have.”

“Well,” I said. “Well, okay. All right. Abby’s working on that. Or maybe she isn’t. Can we trust her? Should we trust her?”

“I trust her,” he said. “I always have.”

“Okay. So she’s gonna work on getting the board on our side and we’re gonna work on getting this thing out of my head.”

I slid into the empty chair across from him. He refused to look me in the eye. I should have guessed the reason. I should have figured there was something else he wasn’t telling me, but I still wanted to believe the best. I still wanted everything to be okay. Because after everything I’d been through, I was still a kid. I didn’t know then that my childhood was about to come to a crashing end. That was the ticktock inside my head. Not a bomb, but a clock: the clock of my childhood winding down.

“Alfred, the SD 1031 cannot be removed.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it can. You put it in; you can take it out.”

He slowly shook his head.

“Any attempt to extract it will cause the device to detonate.” His head was bowed, his shoulders rounded, his hands pressed together in his lap, palm to palm, as if in prayer.

“It can’t be removed,” I said.

“No.”

“Or disabled.”

“No.”

“Or the signal jammed somehow.”

“Alfred . . .”

“And OIPEP will always know where I am.”

“It isn’t a matter of . . . yes. Yes, Alfred. Always.”

“And anytime it feels like it, it can hit the red button, and I’m dead.”

“Yes.”

“And there’s not a damn thing you or Abby Smith or any other of the six billion people on the planet can do about it.”

“Yes.”

I stood up. I shoved the table out of the way. I grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him onto the bed. He fell next to the gun. I picked it up and rammed it against his temple.

“You were my guardian. You swore you would protect me. ‘I will never abandon you or betray you.’ That’s what you said. That’s what you said!”

He didn’t say anything at first. Then he whispered, “Forgive.”

“God’s business,” I said. “Not mine.”

“Your business too,” he whispered. “Especially yours.”

I ignored him. “You’ve done it now, haven’t you? Just like

Mogart, just like Paimon, only you’ve aced them, you’ve done ’em one better. You think you can save me? You were supposed to, you promised to, but instead you’ve killed me, Samuel. You’ve killed me.”

00:23:39:07

We were interrupted by a soft, insistent rapping on the door. Samuel heard it before I did.

“Alfred,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“Alfred, there’s someone at the door.”

“Good. Maybe it’s the maid and she can clean up the mess after I blow your ugly hound-dog head off.”

But I rolled off the bed and took a position a few steps from the door, gun raised, as Samuel got up and peeped through the peephole. Then he glanced back at me.

“Extraordinary,” he said. He opened the door and there was Ashley standing in the doorway. She looked at him; she looked at me; and then out came the sunny Southern California prom queen smile.

“Hi!” she said.

Samuel grabbed her arm, made a quick survey of the parking lot, and pulled her into the room.