The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp 1)

“Mike Arnold,” he said. “How ya doin’?” He turned to Bennacio. “Close call, Benny, huh? You can thank me later. Right now we gotta get the heck outta Dodge. There’s more baddies on the way.”

He herded us down the hall into the main room. Cabiri stood near the fireplace, a couple of black-robed bodies lying at his feet. Another guy in a black robe was sprawled face-down on the kitchen floor, blood pooling under his head. Natalia stood over him, breathing heavily, the dagger glistening in her hand.

“Milo?” Bennacio asked Cabiri, who slowly shook his head and motioned toward the sofa. I didn’t want to look at Milo, but I looked anyway and then was sorry I had looked.

“We all here?” Mike Arnold asked. “All accounted for? That’s terrific. That’s just jim-dandy. Leave the mess; we’ll send somebody over to clean up.”

“How did you find us?” Bennacio asked him.

“No time for that now. Grab whatever gear you have and let’s go.” Mike strode to the front door and flung it open. There was a large black helicopter sitting on the street, whipping cold air into the house.

Cabiri stepped up to Bennacio and said softly, as if he didn’t want Mike to hear, “Come, Lord Bennacio. The choice has been made for us. Trust this turn of fortune.”

“Oh yeah, you gotta trust it when fortune turns,” Mike Arnold said, snapping his gum, and I wondered who the heck Mike Arnold was.

29

We piled into the helicopter, which was one of those big military types that sat seven with room for gunners on both sides. I sat next to Bennacio and Natalia in the seat at the back. My butt was hardly on the cushion when we were airborne, dipping hard to the left as we climbed, and I could taste soured cheese as my stomach came up toward my throat. Natalia was still barefoot and I thought her feet must be freezing in the swirling air inside the open hold. Cabiri and Mike Arnold sat across from us, and Mike was smiling at me with very large white teeth that the gum-smacking made easy to notice.

He leaned forward and shouted in my face, “So you’re Alfred Kropp, huh! Hey, what a boner, taking the Sword like that! You’re our century’s Pandora! You study Greek mythology in school? Pandora’s Box? You must be like, ‘Holy moley, what the hell was I thinking?’ ” He laughed and his gum went smack-smack-smack. He chewed gum like he was angry at it.

He looked at Natalia. “Don’t think we’ve met. Mike Arnold, how ya doin’?”

Natalia just stared at him. He didn’t let it faze him, though. He gave her a wink and turned to Bennacio.

“So anyway, you were asking how I found you. Of course, we knew when and where you crossed the bord

er. Then a couple hours ago we got the intel on the little number you guys did on Kaczmarczyk, so it wasn’t brain surgery figuring you were probably gone to ground with Cabiri.”

“Your arrival was most . . . fortuitous,” Bennacio said.

“Like the cavalry, huh?”

“Where are you taking us?” Bennacio asked.

“We’re giving you a ride across the pond, Benny. See, there’s been a development.”

“What development?”

He glanced at me, then said, “That’s classified.”

“Mogart has contacted you,” Bennacio said. It wasn’t a question.

“That’s classified, Benny. Class-i-fied.” He flashed a meaningless smile in my direction.

“You have made an offer to buy the Sword and he has accepted.”

“I’m beginning to think we have a communication problem here,” Mike shouted at him over the roar of the engine. “We’ve taken full jurisdiction over this little matter and I’m not authorized to tell you anything else!”

Cabiri turned his head and pretended to spit. I had seen him make that gesture once before, and as I stared at Mike Arnold it hit me I was looking at an agent of OIPEP.

We were in the air only about twenty minutes when the helicopter made a wide loop and started to descend. Mike looked at his watch, pulled a gun from his Windbreaker pocket, and held it loosely in his lap. He noticed me staring at it.

“A nine-millimeter Glock! Wanna hold it?” he asked me. I shook my head. He smiled, smacking on the gum. Mike Arnold clearly didn’t share Bennacio’s opinion that guns were barbaric. I got the feeling Mike Arnold liked guns—a lot.

The morning sun was just visible below the cloud cover that was pulled across the sky as we touched down. It felt cold enough to snow, and the wind was kicking up. We were at another airfield. About a hundred yards away was a military cargo plane parked on the runway, its huge back door open to a blackness like the inside of a gigantic mouth.

I followed Mike and Cabiri out of the helicopter, but Bennacio stayed inside with Natalia. It looked like they were having another argument, and Natalia’s eyes were shining with tears. Bennacio tried to get up, but she put a hand on his arm and it was pretty clear to me she was pleading with him not to go. He shook his head and kissed her cheek before joining us in the tornado beneath the helicopter’s spinning blades.