The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(63)

I didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to care.

“ ‘Poetry is how the soul breathes . . .’ I forget who said that. I suspect your exposure to it is limited to the lyrics of P. Diddy and Jay-Z. You can listen to them if you like. We have satellite radio. And television. There’s also a full library of DVDs onboard. We just added the complete six-volume Three Stooges collection. In high def! You might find the parallels comforting.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“And books,” he said. “Classics and popular literature. No comics, I’m afraid. You strike me as an Archie fan. That Jughead! And will Arch ever choose between Veronica and Betty?”

“You’re really a well-rounded guy,” I said. “Poetry, books, music, comics, kidnapping, torture, assassination.”

“Oh, I dabble. What is the American expression? Jack of all trades, master of none.”

“There’s one thing that’s been bugging me,” I said.

“About the Thirteenth Skull.”

He smiled, an eyebrow climbing toward his hairline.

“Yes?”

“Why does Jourdain need to kill me to get it?”

“Why does he—?” Vosch cracked up. He laughed until tears shone in his eyes.

“What?” I asked.

“Ah, Alfred,” Vosch said as he dabbed his cheek with a white handkerchief. “I suppose for the same reason the chicken must cross the road.”

“A friend told me Jourdain was chasing a myth.”

“A friend told you this? You should exercise better judgment in your choice of friends, I would say!”

He reached forward suddenly and, before I could react, grabbed my head, his palm pressed against my nose, fingertips digging into my scalp.

“There is nothing mythical about our quest, Alfred Kropp. Even now the Skull is within our possession and in a few hours it will find its place among the Twelve.”

He started to go on and then stopped himself. I wondered if he was disobeying orders by telling me.

He changed the subject.

“I knew you would call, of course. Once you realized we would take Needlemier. He’s the largest piece left on the board; you couldn’t afford to lose him. And ‘Greater love hath no man than this,’ yes?”

“I know that one. It’s from the Bible.”

“Though Needlemier somewhat stretches the definition of ‘friend.’ He gave Samuel to us quicker than you can say Judas.”

“Maybe he’s just not cut out for this kind of chess.”

“Not like we are, certainly.”

“Don’t lump me in with you, Vosch.”

“Why shouldn’t I? We’re not so different, you and I. You grasped immediately my move against the lawyer, just as I discerned your countermove to contact me. Even our motives are similar, Alfred. You would do anything to protect your friends, just as I would do anything to protect my patron Jourdain Garmot. Now we near the end of the game: I bring you to him while you plot your response. What is it? An ambush at Tintagel? Your guardian and this mysterious yet beautiful blonde await our arrival? Or have you enlisted the aid of the saber-wielding Spaniard and his powerful Company?”

“Maybe it’s simpler than that,” I said.

The sun was setting over the Atlantic and the chalkboard-gray had changed to burnished gold. The shining patina hid a world teaming with life, fantastic creatures for whom our world above was deadly. Predators and prey, from the microscopic to the huge—the sea was empty and chokingly full. In my dreams lately, it was full of dragons.

“Like Lancelot upon the Plain,” Vosch said, “he marches to the drumbeat of his sin, toward his certain doom.”

“Who said that?” I asked.

He smiled. “I did.”

TINTAGEL, CORNWALL, U.K.

THE CASTLE CAMELOT

00:06:35:10

The ruins clustered near the cliff’s edge gleamed in the moonlight. You could hear the surf crashing into the rocks three hundred feet below. There was a storm far out at sea; you could see the dark line of clouds on the western horizon and the flicker of lightning, though it was so far away you couldn’t hear the thunder.

The stones were white, worn down from a thousand years of sun and wind and rain. They stuck out from the ground like the huge, discarded teeth of a giant. Here great halls once stood, courtyards and chambers with vast, cathedral ceilings and, somewhere in the rubble, a great hall with a round table in the middle of it, and around that table sat a king and his knights, including the bravest in the kingdom, his best friend and my ancestor, whose disloyalty would lead to the crumbling of the white stones and the death of the king he loved.

It was midnight and Camelot was deserted.

“Where’s Jourdain?” I asked.

“You know where he is,” Vosch answered.

Of course I knew. Flat-Face II and Weasel stayed in the Land Rover while Vosch and I descended the steps cut into the cliff side. On the eastern shore of the inlet the mouth of a cave yawned toward the open ocean and the silent, raging storm.

We entered Merlin’s Cave. Torches burned along one wall, throwing our shadows across the floor and against the opposite wall of the chamber, where a collection of human skulls sat grinning, grouped in a circle on a natural ledge about chest high.

“What are those?” I asked, horrified.