The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp 3)

“Well,” I said. “It’s not the Caribbean, but it’s more like it.”

Beside me, Ashley breathed, “Oh, no.”

“Why ‘Oh, no?’ ”I asked. When Ashley didn’t answer, I said to Abby, “I don’t get it. What’s this COI have to do with me?”

Abby refused to look at me. She was staring at the picture of the island. “It’s your new home, Alfred.”

She hit a button, and the picture changed to a closer shot.

I saw a cabana and some clothes drying on a line. The water was emerald blue. Paradise, I thought. And for some reason a shiver went down my spine.

“It looks pretty nice,” I said slowly.

“Alfred, you don’t understand,” Ashley said. “They’re not going to give you a new identity. There isn’t going to be a reinsertion into the civilian interface. They’re going to drop you there and keep you there. Forever.”

“For now,” Abby said.

“I still don’t get it,” I said. “Why are you dropping me on an unchartered island?”

Abby said, “I was informed of the modification just this morning, Alfred. The board’s decision is final, I’m afraid. It believes that, given the peculiar circumstances involved here, a standard extraction is out of the question.”

“How come?”

Abby glanced at Ashley. I went on. “And if you say ‘that’s classified,’ I’m coming over this table at you.”

“Because of his blood, isn’t it?” Ashley asked. “Because of what it can do.”

A voice spoke up behind me. “We cannot risk losing the carrier of the most important active agent in Company possession.”

Nueve. He was standing just inside the door, leaning on his black cane. Smiling. Eyes glittering. For some reason I thought of pirates.

“In short, you are simply too important, Alfred,” he said, patting my shoulder as he walked around the table to slide in next to Abby. “A vital concern for people your age, as I understand. More vital than small pores. Even if the Phoenix Protocol succeeds, there is still a chance, however small, that something, oh, shall we say irreversible, could happen to you.”

“If you’re worried about Jourdain and his boys, you could just kill him,” I said. “Extract him extremely or whatever you call it.”

“It is not merely that,” Nueve said with a shrug. “Of course, we could execute an extreme extraction order upon Monsieur Garmot, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility of your demise by other, more mundane, means. An accident, for example. Jaywalking across a busy street and squish! no more Alfred Kropp. We cannot risk that.”

Abby had hit another button and a slide show began to run of Camp Omega-I. Pleasant walkways that weaved among the tropical foliage. An Olympic-size swimming pool at the base of a hundred-foot waterfall. Tennis courts. A movie theater. A shining glass structure that sat high on a promontory overlooking the empty sea—my new house? Club OIPEP.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Nueve asked with no hint of irony. “All the amenities. The finest chefs. A staff that would be the envy of the world’s greatest vacation resorts, if the world knew of it. There’s even a masseuse!”

“Omega,” I said. “Isn’t that like the last letter of the Greek alphabet?”

Nueve nodded. “Not just like it, Alfred. It is the last letter of the Greek alphabet.”

“End of the road,” I said.

“You’ll be safe there,” Abby said. She started to say something else, and then stopped herself. “It’s not what either of us wanted, but sometimes necessity trumps desire, Alfred. You of all people surely can understand that.”

“What if we just go ahead with the original plan and I promise to be very careful—like never jaywalking and always riding the bus?”

Abby shook her head. “I’m sorry, Alfred. I tried. I fought to keep the original protocol but”—she glared in Nueve’s direction—“I was overruled.”

“And what Ashley said . . . about forever. I can’t leave?”

Abby said, “We—I—may be able to arrange brief trips back . . .”

Nueve stifled a laugh.