The Thirteenth Skull (Page 39)

“Did he say where he was going?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew. He was going after Jourdain. He was going to kill him, if he hadn’t already, or die trying.

“Not a hint, but between us, Alfred, I have the impression he doesn’t like me very much.”

“He gives everyone that impression,” I said. “Does he know I died?”

“He left before I received the news . . . I don’t know, Alfred.”

“But Vosch was at my funeral. So Jourdain thinks I’m dead. He’ll tell Sam and maybe that will save his life. I’m not sure. Samuel might kill him anyway, if he hasn’t already.”

But I hoped I was in time to stop it. I didn’t think Jourdain was evil—just messed up by his father’s murder and he had thought taking me out would bring him some peace. I knew better.

“Well,” Mr. Needlemier said. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but it certainly would solve all your difficulties if Jourdain were, um, shall we say, in your current perceived condition—but in actuality.”

I sighed. Lawyers. “Not all my difficulties, Mr. Needlemier. Not by a long shot. That reminds me. I need cash. There’s a Western Union here at the airport. Can you wire me some?”

“Some what?”

“Cash, Mr. Needlemier. Money. We need clothes and plane tickets—and food. We haven’t eaten in almost two days.”

“We?”

“Me and Ashley.”

“Ah, the lovely secret agent person. Of course, Alfred. I’ll wire you as much as you need. Are you flying back to Knoxville?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s the first place he’ll look.”

“Jourdain?”

“Nueve.”

“Nueve!”

“Well, both. Jourdain and Nueve. The list keeps growing.”

“Ah, so that’s what you meant by difficulties. I thought perhaps you were referring to the Skull.”

“The Skull?”

“The Thirteenth Skull. You asked me about it at the airport, remember? Well, it tweaked my curiosity, so I took it upon myself to find out a little more about it.”

“And?”

“And I did.”

“No, I meant what did you find out?”

“The Thirteenth Skull may be another name for the Skull of Doom.”

“The Skull of Doom?”

“Or then again, perhaps not. The literature is quite contradictory and vague, like all such literature, but utterly fascinating . . .”

“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.’ ”