Dark Suit pulled an ID from the breast pocket of his jacket and held it up.
“Vosch,” he said to the cop. “FBI.” He smiled a second time at me. “Step down, Alfred. You made a good run, but it’s over.”
“I gotta call this in,” the cop said. He still hadn’t lowered his weapon.
The man who called himself Vosch nodded, still smiling, while his buddy ripped the dagger from my hand, pulled me from the barrier, and handcuffed me.
“Look ...” I said to the cop.
“Shut up, Alfred,” Vosch said pleasantly. Then he said to the cop, “Terrorism, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and interstate flight.”
The suit with the gun—now he had the muzzle jammed into my rib cage—dragged me toward the car as I shouted at the bewildered young cop, “These guys aren’t FBI! Check out their wheels—since when do FBI agents drive Town Cars?”
I was slung into the backseat. Vosch’s partner slid in beside me and slammed the door. The driver, a big guy with slits for eyes and a crooked nose, glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Kropp,” he murmured.
I could see Vosch talking to the cop, who had put away his gun, which I interpreted as a sign that he was buying Vosch’s story. Vosch was showing him some papers, probably a phony warrant for my arrest.
“At least tell me why you guys want to kill me so bad,” I said.
They laughed.
Vosch walked back to the car and got in beside the driver. We roared straight back a few yards, spun around and then proceeded the wrong way to the next exit. I could see cars jamming all three lanes; the interstate was backed up for miles.
We exited onto Kingston Pike and headed east, toward downtown. I waited for the killing blow. It was the perfect time: I was handcuffed and helpless, trapped behind dark-tinted glass. They had been trying awfully hard to kill me and this was the perfect opportunity.
The blow didn’t come. As we waited at an intersection for the light to change, I said, “Something’s happened. Where are you taking me?”
Nobody answered. Vosch hit the speed dial on his cell phone. After a few seconds, he said, “He is acquired. Alive, oui. We will be there in ten minutes.” He had lost his Southern accent. Now he sounded French. He closed the phone and slipped it into his breast pocket.
“Whatever you guys want—whatever it is you’re after—I don’t have it,” I blurted out. “I don’t have anything!”
“Be quiet,” Vosch said.
“Just promise me you won’t hurt anyone. Take me, but don’t kill anybody else because of me, okay?”
The guy beside me leaned forward and whispered something to Vosch in French. Vosch nodded, whispered something back. The guy beside me pulled a truncheon from his coat pocket and slammed it against my head.
05:04:10:51
I woke to the sound of a train rumbling nearby. For a few precious seconds, before the memory of what happened in the car came crowding back, I was ten years old again, lying in my bed in Ohio. My mom was in the next room watching TV, and I was drifting off to sleep, listening to the trains pass on the tracks about a half mile from our house. I’ll never say I had a perfect childhood, but there were moments in it that were perfect, and that was one of them.
I heard chairs scraping across a wooden floor. Whispers. A stifled laugh.
Then someone said, “He’s awake.”
Someone else said, “Open your eyes, Alfred Kropp.”
I did, but only because I knew I’d have to eventually.
Propped up in a straight-backed wooden chair with my hands still cuffed behind my back, I was sitting in the middle of a huge room, the ceiling at least two stories above my head, the walls lost in murky shadow. Detecting the distinct odor of coffee, I wondered if they had taken me to the old JFG warehouse at the edge of the Old City.
“Behold, the last in the line of Lancelot!”
The speaker was leaning against the edge of a table a couple of feet in front of me. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Slender. I’d never seen him before, but his face looked vaguely familiar. Like Vosch and his buddies, he spoke with a faint French accent.
“It seems fitting somehow,” he went on. “That you would meet your fate dressed like an old woman!”