underside about six feet above the surface. With this kind of setup, the Pandora could give a world-class speedboat a run for its money.
Op Nine appeared beside me. I was busted. To distract him, I pointed at the dark line on the horizon and asked, âWhatâs that?â
âEgypt,â Op Nine answered.
âSo this is the Mediterranean?â
âNo, this is the Red Sea,â he said. Just five minutes ago I had looked at a sign that read, âRed Sea Adventures.â
âIâm gonna need some shoes,â I said. Iâm a pretty tall guy, but this Operative Nine towered over me. Tilting my chin up, I could see the black tangle of his nose hair.
He didnât say anything, so I asked, âSo what happens when we reach the insertion point?â
âWe will wait for nightfall. Then the race for the nexus.â
âNexusâwhere in Egypt is that?â
âIt is not a name of a place, Kropp. It is the nexus, the core. The nucleus.â
âOh, sure. The nucleus of what ?â
âReentry.â
âOh, boy. I donât guess youâre ever going to tell me whatâs going on with these Seals, so Iâm going to give it a shot. You donât have to say anything, just nod or twitch your mouth, some kind of signal I might be on the right track.
âThis ring of Solomonâs controls something thatâs locked up in the Holy Vessel. Like the name of this boat sort of implies, itâs not something you want to be messing with. Mike got away with both of them, and heâs hightailed it into the Egyptian desert, because he canât just open the Holy Vessel anywhere and, since we have five hours or so to get there, Iâm guessing he canât just open it whenever he feels like it. Maybe the stars have to be in perfect alignment or thereâs some other criteria I donât know about, like Mars being in Sagittarius or something along those lines.â
He didnât nod or twitch or move a single muscle. He just stared down at me. If I had some shoes, Iâd be a little taller and might not be able to see so much nose hair.
âWhatâs your name?â I asked.
âOperative Nine.â
âNo, I mean whatâs your real name?â
âWhatever it needs to be.â
âI promise I wonât tell anybody.â
He was smiling. It wasnât a very natural-looking smile. He smiled like smiling hurt.
âI could tell you,â he said. âBut then I would have to kill you.â
âThatâs a really old joke.â
âIâm not joking.â
He stepped back and motioned toward the bow. âCome, Kropp. We should not tarry. The sea has eyes.â
13
I followed him back to my cabin. I told him my feet were cold and he just looked at me like Iâd said something in Swahili, or maybe it was more like he spoke Swahili and I didnât.
âThere are some matters I must attend to,â Op Nine said. He left. I hoped one of those matters included socks and shoes. I sat on the bed. I picked at my toenails, which needed trimming. I was tempted to bite them down, but I hadnât done that since I was ten, and some things you should move past.
I wondered what happened to Ashley after the helicopter rescue in Tennessee. Was her injury completely healed now? I had mixed feelings about her. She had saved my life, but she had also lied to me about who she was and why she was âattachedâ to me. I wondered if my feelings were mixed because I thought she was a nice person or if it was because I thought she was pretty.
OIPEP agents fell into two categories, as far as I could tell: the preppie, grad student type, of which Mike Arnold was the perfect example; and the stoic, more menacing type like Operative Nine. That guy was so stiff and precise that I wondered if he was one of those âunacknowledged technologiesâ that Abigail mentioned back in London.
Maybe he was a cyborg, but that
Lee Thomas
Ronan Bennett
Diane Thorne
P J Perryman
Cristina Grenier
Kerry Adrienne
Lila Dubois
Gary Soto
M.A. Larson
Selena Kitt