The Thirteenth Skull

“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.

“Are you going to shoot me again?” she asked me.

I lowered the gun. “How did you find us?” I asked.

“You gave me this, remember?” She was holding the black box. “If you’re going to give someone the slip, Alfred, you should take the tracking device with you.”

Samuel pulled it out of her hands.

“Why are you here?” he demanded.

“The same reason you are,” she shot back, looking at me. “Some things matter and some things don’t.”

“Alfred,” Samuel said. “Give me the gun.”

“He’s going to shoot me, Alfred,” Ashley said calmly. “You can take the Op Nine out of the job, but you can’t take the job out of the Op Nine.”

“You may have been followed. Alfred.”

I handed him the gun and he disappeared into the night. I sank onto the end of the bed. All of a sudden I was very tired, the most tired I’d been in a long time. She sat beside me.

“I thought—I was sure—you were dead,” she said. She took my hand.

“I’m not.”

“I’m glad.”

Then she hauled off and slapped me across the cheek.

“Don’t ever do that again, understand?” she said. She punched me as hard as she could in the chest. “You’re my assignment.”

She burst into tears. I held her while she cried. Then she pushed away and angrily brushed the tears from her perfectly formed, perfectly tanned cheeks.

“You shouldn’t have come back, Ashley.”

“You shouldn’t have dumped me.”

“You know why.”

“Doesn’t make it right.”

“ ‘Right.’ Does it still matter, Ashley? Not what’s necessary, but what’s right?”

“Of course it still matters.”

I nodded. “So if it still matters, if right isn’t wrong, then there’s just one thing left to do.”

“What?”

“Complete the circle.”

Samuel came back in. He locked the door. He looked at Ashley for a long, uncomfortable moment. She looked right back at him, her chin raised in defiance.

“I wasn’t followed,” she said.

He ignored her. “Alfred, I’ve been thinking, and perhaps your instinct was correct. Our hope lies in Director Smith. She still might be able to persuade the board to abandon SOFIA and reinstitute the Phoenix Protocol.”

Ashley agreed. “It might be possible for our engineers to find a way to disable the SD 1031 without killing you.”

“So we make for headquarters in the morning and pray we stay one step ahead of our enemies,” Sam said.

I started to say no, I couldn’t go, not yet, and then it hit me if I said no I would have to say why: I had to save Mr. Needlemier from Vosch. But if I told them that, Sam would do anything it took to stop me. My thing-that-must-be-done wasn’t his thing-that-must-be-done, and if I told him my thing, he was going to do his thing, and that would mean Vosch would do his thing, and that was torturing Mr. Needlemier like he did Sam, maybe even killing him and his family, all because he had the misfortune of knowing Alfred Kropp. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

00:20:56:31

Sam tried reaching Abby Smith twice before we turned in for the night. He had the top-secret number for the cell phone she kept with her at all times, but even that call wouldn’t go through.

“She’s dead,” I told him. “Or been fired. Or captured by Nueve. We’re walking right into a trap.”

“Simply because something is possible does not make it probable, Alfred,” he said.

“Oh. Thanks, Sensei, I feel better now.”

Ashley took the first watch. She pulled a chair in front of the door and sat there with the gun in her lap. I waited until Samuel was asleep, then eased out of bed and sat in the empty chair across from her.

“Why did you come back?” I asked.

“Because I’m an idiot,” she said.

“You’re not an idiot,” I said. “Which is why I asked in the first place.”

“I’m in love with someone I shouldn’t be in love with,” she said. “It’s wrong and I know it’s wrong and still I can’t help myself.”

I was shocked. It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Ashley began to cry. She slumped in the chair and I came out of mine to catch her. The gun fell to the carpet. She pushed her face into the nook between my neck and shoulder and sobbed.

“Whatever happens, Alfred, I want you to understand something.”

“Sure.”

“I meant what I said about that time machine.”

“And I meant what I said,” I said, though I couldn’t remember what exactly I said or when, exactly, I said it.