“What’s his real name?”
“Whatever it needs to be,” Op Nine said.
Abby said, “Only the director knows his real name.”
“How come?”
“The nature of his work.”
“And that is?”
“Classified,” he said.
“That’s pretty clunky, though, Operative Nine,” I said. “Why don’t you just use a code name like ‘Bob’?”
“ ‘Bob’ would be more an alias than a code name, don’t you think?” Abigail was smiling.
“What’s going on?” I asked, struggling to sit up, but my head was throbbing and the room was spinning, and I decided sitting up wasn’t such a good idea at that moment.
“We don’t know the answer to that question,” Abby said.
“It seems an odd turn of events, given what we know about Mike Arnold’s plans.”
“Maybe that’s something you could share with me,” I said. “Mike’s plans.”
“After he was terminated, Michael Arnold stole two very valuable items from the OIPEP vaults. We are on our way to intercept him before he can put them to use.”
“What did he take?” I asked, and waited for the usual answer: That’s classified.
Op Nine glanced at Abby, who gave him a sharp nod. He looked at me. His eyes were very dark, almost black.
“The Seals of Solomon,” he said in that deep, undertaker-like voice. If he was waiting for some sign of recognition from me, he was going to be waiting for a long time. I just stared back.
“You have heard of King Solomon,” he said.
“From the Bible, right?”
“Yes. In the days of his reign, Solomon possessed two items of great power, immeasurable gifts from heaven. The Great Seal and the Lesser Seal, also called the Holy Vessel. These two charges he jealously guarded until his death three thousand years ago. The Great Seal was lost in antiquity, but the Lesser Seal was recovered from its hiding place in Babylon by an archeological expedition in 1924—”
Abby cut off the lecture. “The Greater Seal, or Seal of Solomon, is a ring, Alfred. The Company recovered it in the 1950s from a now-defunct apocalyptic death cult in the Sudan—” “Wait a minute,” I said. “Did you say the Seal of Solomon is a ring? Like a wear-on-your-finger-type ring?”
“Precisely.
“Have you paged Elijah Wood? I think I saw this movie.”
She smiled. “The ring to which you refer is a product of art, a fiction. The Great Seal of Solomon is an artifact of history. It belongs to our world, not an imaginary one. Most significantly, Solomon’s ring is not the creation of evil. Of course, in the wrong hands it could be used to that purpose, and that is precisely why we recovered it and kept it safe for the past fifty-five years—”
“Until Mike stole it.”
“We have since launched a complete overhaul of our security protocols.”
“Boy, that’s a comfort. So Mike stole these two things from you guys . . . and then comes to Knoxville to kill me. Why?”
They looked at each other.
“We don’t know,” Abigail said. “We were hoping you might.”
“Me? OIPEP’s looking to me for answers? We’re in bigger trouble than I thought. What about Ashley?”