The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (30 page)

Maybe my destiny was to be the sword-wielding savior of the world, and wouldn't that just make Amy Pouchard regret not giving me her cell phone number! I had a vision of myself on a great throne, with a great big golden crown on my great big head.

The cold I had felt coming on was now fully on: My head hurt, my nose was running, and my forehead was hot. I lay on the bed and told myself in a minute I would get up and take a cool shower to bring my fever down and be ready to think more clearly. It's pretty sad when you reach the point of scheduling your clear thinking.

“That's it. You've figured it all out, Kropp,” I told myself. I was pretty feverish by this point. “The Knights of the Sacred Order kept the Sword hidden for a thousand years, waiting for Alfred Kropp to come along and save the world. Right! It never occurred to any of them, from Bedivere on down, that maybe one of
them
could take up the Sword and bring peace to this rotten world. They were waiting for
you
, Mr. big-headed high school dropout, to take care of things.”

I touched the cold metal of the blade—after a thousand years, how smooth and perfect it was! Just touching it made me happy and sad at the same time.

Eventually, I fell asleep, and I was back in the dream of the dark rider on the terrible battlefield, the Sword in the rider's hand. Just as he was about to slam the blade into the ground and blow away his enemies, he lifted his head and I could see his face. It was
my
face. Not Kropp the Benign . . . but Kropp the Conqueror, Kropp the Terrible.

When I opened my eyes again the room was dark and the phone was ringing. I turned on the table lamp and wondered how long I had been asleep. I stared at the phone on the bedside table and wondered who was calling. Maybe the front desk, to tell me some guys in black robes were waiting for me down in the lobby.

I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Bonjour, Mr. Kropp.”

I picked up Mike's gun from the bedside table and held it in my lap.

“Mr. Mogart.”

“Are you watching television?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is there a television in your room? If so, I suggest you turn it to channel one.”

“Right now?”

“Immediately.”

“I'm gonna have to put the phone down.”

“That's quite all right.”

I set the phone down and turned on the TV. The BBC news had just started. About five minutes into the show, they ran a story about the American attorney general's news conference that afternoon. He was announcing an update to the FBI's most wanted list. Before they flashed the photograph on the screen, I knew what I would see.

It was my picture.

The attorney general was saying I was an international fugitive with ties to terrorists and was responsible for the deaths of sixteen British and American personnel in an attempt to destroy one of England's most famous national treasures. Then he announced the Justice Department was offering a six-million-dollar reward for information leading to my capture and conviction.

The big-headed loser was finally tops in something: I was the most-wanted fugitive in the entire world, but all I could think of was how difficult it would be now to assemble my summit of world leaders and declare the founding of the Kingdom of Kropptopia.

I turned the set off and went back to the phone.

“I'm back,” I said.

“Congratulations, Mr. Kropp. You are a celebrity. Perhaps you will even make the cover of
People
magazine.”

“How—how did you find me, Mr. Mogart?”

I walked over to the window as I talked. I pulled back the curtain, expecting to see a SWAT team or their British counterparts storming the building. But all I could see was the empty parking lot and some woods. To my left, the dirty yellow lights of London glowed on the horizon.

“A fifteen-year-old boy—and not a particularly clever boy at that—alone in a strange country, afraid and without friends, driving a car equipped with a Global Positioning System—how difficult do you think that really is?”

“I guess not too difficult,” I said.

I sat back down on the bed.

“I know what you want, Mr. Mogart. But, see, if I give it to you it's going to mean the end of the world. I'm only fifteen, like you said, and it's really important to me that the world sticks around for a while, at least until I'm forty. Maybe fifty, even.”

“Ah, but you are missing the point, Alfred,” Mogart said. It was the first time he had called me by my first name. “Whether you live to fifty is of little importance to me. I want only one thing, so you see we are both equally disadvantaged. You have something I want and I have something you want.”

“What?” I asked, since I couldn't think of a single thing I had left that mattered. Everybody who mattered to me was dead. But that wasn't true and the funny thing was that, of the two of us, Mogart was the only one who knew it.

“Kropp.”

It took a second for it to sink in that the voice on the other end wasn't Mogart's. It wasn't even a man's voice.

“Kropp,” she whispered again.

“Natalia?”

I heard a little screech, then silence, and Mogart's voice came back.

“Understand, Mr. Kropp, that I care not for what I have, as you care not for what you have. I would sacrifice my life for what you possess, as you would sacrifice yours for what I possess. To my mind, there is only one way to satiate our particular desires. Are you following me, Mr. Kropp?”

“Wouldn't it have been easier just to come here and take it from me?” My voice was shaking badly.

“Why should I come there for it, Mr. Kropp, when you are bringing it to me?”

Just then I heard a sharp rap on the door. I jumped and gave a little yelp.

Mogart said, “Someone is at your door. Open it.”

“I have a gun,” I said. “I'll use it.”

“Do so and she dies.”

The rapping on the door continued.

“Who's at my door?” I asked.

“Answer it and find out. I'll wait.”

I walked to the door and called out, “Who is it?”

“Your escort, Mr. Kropp,” came a voice from the other side. I unlocked the door and shuffled backwards, lifting the gun, so when he walked into the room it was pointed right at his nose.

“Don't even think about going toward that bed,” I told him.

He nodded. He was a big man, about my size. He wore a long gray cape over his shoulders, fastened by a dragon-shaped pin just below his Adam's apple. Under the cape, he was dressed in an expensive tailored suit. His long hair was greased and combed back from his face.

“Stand right there,” I added, backing toward the bed, keeping the gun on him. He nodded again. “Don't make any sudden moves!” I said sharply to him. He nodded a third time. I picked up the receiver with my left hand and brought it to my ear.

“Mr. Kropp,” Mogart said softly. “I believe I told you some time ago that the will of most men is weak. Thus nations crumble and decay, great enterprises are lost, needless suffering and humiliation ensue. I believe I also told you—in fact, demonstrated to you in the most graphic way—what would happen if your will opposed mine. You will accompany my associate to our little meeting or the girl will die.”

My knees completely gave out then and I sat on the bed. The gun dropped to my side. I had made a vow and if I kept that vow, Natalia would die. I felt so miserable at that point, I almost picked up the Sword and handed it to the escort, who was still standing by the door, smiling at me.

Mogart's voice lost all its playfulness and it got hard.

“Listen carefully, Kropp. You are not adept at what you're attempting to do. You are a boy playing a man's game. You might be enjoying this make-believe game of being a hero, but truly you are fortunate that I found you first.”

“I don't know what you're talking about!” I screamed into the phone. “I never wanted to be a hero! I never wanted any of this!”

“They are coming, Mr. Kropp. Remember the report you just saw on television? The OIPEPs are coming for you and they
will
find you. And when they find you, they will take the Sword and I will kill the girl. You will have lost both. You have no choice now but to bring it to me.”

“But if I bring it to you, you'll kill her anyway.”

“You wound my feelings, Mr. Kropp.”

“You'll kill her, because the last time I gave you the Sword you killed Uncle Farrell, and you didn't need to kill Uncle Farrell.”

He sighed. “No. I should not have killed your uncle. I should have killed
you
.”

“You're gonna do that too,” I said into the phone.

“Then your answer is no?”

“You already know what my answer's going to be.”

“Just so,” Mogart said.

45

I hung up the phone. Mogart's associate, was still standing by the door, smiling at me.

“Come,” he said. “The master is expecting us.”

“I've got the Sword now,” I said. “Doesn't that make me the master?”

“Do you claim it?” he asked mockingly.

I looked at it on the bed beside me. “No. But that's the point, I think. Nobody can. You could wait a thousand years, ten thousand even, but nobody can really claim it. I think that's where your boss has got it all wrong and why the knights kept it hidden all those years, maybe even why Arthur had to die. It's not something you can own.” He wasn't getting it. I asked, “Where are we going?”

“Did the master not tell you? To Dundagel, now called Tintagel.”

“Oh. What's in Tintagel?”

“Camelot is in Tintagel, and the caves of Merlin.”

“Sure,” I said. “That would make sense.”

Then I picked up the gun and shot him in the left kneecap.

He yelled and pitched forward onto the floor, wrapping his arms around his knee. I grabbed Excalibur from the bed beside me.

“In the name of Saint Michael!” I yelled, and brought the Sword, flat side down, toward his head. He didn't even see it coming. I hit him in the head with the broad part of the blade and he went still.

I knelt beside him and pressed my fingertips against his wrist. He wasn't dead. I remembered what Bennacio had told me after he dispatched those two thralls in the forest back in America:
You would not pity them if you knew them as I do
.

“Well, Bennacio,” I murmured as I unhooked the dragon pin to remove the gray cloak. “I know what they did to my father. And I know what they did to you and to the rest of the knights, but at some point somebody's gotta say enough. At some point all the blood and guts have to dry up.”

Underneath the cloak the escort had concealed one of those black-bladed swords. I searched his pockets and found a set of car keys.

I hooked the black sword around my waist and twisted the belt around so it hung on my right side. I slipped Excalibur into the other side of my belt, to hang on my left side. I threw the gray cape around my shoulders and hooked the dragon pin, then looked at myself in the mirror. Sir Alfred of the Castle Screws-up-a-lot.