We landed in Chicago at what looked like an old military base. The flight had lasted about fifty minutes, so I figured at four thousand miles per hour we had traveled maybe three thousand miles. That meant OIPEP headquarters probably wasn’t in North America. Antarctica seemed too far away, so maybe it was somewhere in the Arctic Circle, though I didn’t see any polar bears or walrus or Eskimos, which I figured were plentiful in the Arctic.
A sheet of gray clouds hung low over us, moving rapidly as if a giant unseen hand was pulling it westward. The absence of the sun seemed to bleed all the color from the world; the grass was the same dull gray color as the hangars. I heard thunder rolling deep in the cloud cover.
“The whole world is covered?” I asked Op Nine as we walked toward a blue Ford Taurus parked by one of the hangars.
“Yes.”
He popped the trunk and unzipped a large canvas bag that sat inside. Op Nine took a quick inventory as I looked over his shoulder. The bag contained maps, a couple of wallets, two semiautomatic handguns, socks, underwear, some shirts and pants, a laptop computer, two other pistols that looked like flare guns, the Ars Goetia, and a roll of toilet paper.
“Toilet paper?” I asked.
“One never knows.”
He stuck one of the semiautomatics behind his back. Then he took the flare gun and ejected the clip from the handle to check the bullets. The bullets had a slightly flared head; they looked like a miniature version of the bullets for the 3XDs.
“What is that?” I asked.
“My life’s work.”
He stuck this pistol into some hidden pocket in the lining of his parka, and then turned to me, holding one of each type of gun in either hand.
I would have preferred my sword, the blade of the Last Knight Bennacio, but that was back in Knoxville and I didn’t figure we had the time to get it, although the X-30 could probably get us there in about ten minutes.
He tossed the weapons back into the bag, slammed the trunk closed, and we climbed into the Taurus. He pulled down the visor and the keys fell into his lap.
“Not exactly James Bond,” I said, looking around the ratty interior. The seats were stained, the floorboards crusted with mud, the lining on the roof coming off in one spot and hanging down.
“This is a covert operation,” he reminded me.
“Where’s the button to convert it into a submarine?”
“You’ve seen too many movies, Alfred.”
“You’re right. I’ll try to stay grounded in the real world of demons zipping around Mount Everest plotting the end of human existence.”
He turned off the access road onto a two-lane highway, then jumped on the interstate. Directly ahead I could see the Chicago skyline on the shores of Lake Michigan.
“So why do we think Mike might be in Chicago?” I asked. “I mean, I figured he was from here; he always wears that Cubs cap and he mentioned the Natural History Museum, but if I was going to hide somewhere, I wouldn’t go to the most obvious place people would look.”
“He may not be here, but he may have come seeking his comfort zone, the place with which he is most familiar—and his pursuers not.”
I watched as the speedometer leaped to 110.
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll be pulled over?”
“We won’t be.”
Ten minutes later we were downtown, parked in front of the Drake Hotel. The wind was ferocious, howling like something alive as it roared between the skyscrapers—a beast— not just a beast, though, but a beast that hated you. I pulled the hood of my parka over my head as Op Nine got the bag from the trunk.
At the check-in desk Op Nine went British.
“Good afternoon!” he said in a perfect accent. “Lord Polmeroy and nephew to check in, please.”
I looked over at him, startled. Not only had his accent changed, but everything about his voice: the pitch higher, the modulation a little quiverier. Even his face looked different somehow, as if he had the ability to control his facial muscles to achieve different looks.
We took the elevator to our room on the sixteenth floor.
“Nephew?” I asked.