“Pron! Pron! Not ton!”
“Not on? What’s not on?”
“Plane!” I yelled. “Chicago! Can you get me one?”
“No planes, Alfred. All planes are grounded!”
I walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. The world was gray and shadowless, except for the orange flickering of the fire-rain and the fires that seemed to burn on every block.
“A car, then, the fastest you can find,” I said. “I’m at the Drake Hotel. Did you hear me?”
?
??Yes, yes, Alfred. I’m writing this down. What kind of car did you say?”
“I didn’t say. Just the fastest you can find. The fastest car in the world. And I need it in the next thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes! Alfred, I don’t know if that’s possible—”
“Make it possible!” I yelled.
“All right. Fastest car. Thirty minutes. Drake Hotel. Anything else?”
“No. Yes. I need to know where the devil’s door is.”
“Devil’s door?”
“Or the gate to hell. It might go by either name, or both.
And I need the answer by the time I get to Knoxville.”
“All right, all right. Devil’s door. Hell’s gate. What else?”
“Nothing. Wait, there is something.” I told him what that something was, gave him the number of the hotel, and hung up.
I plopped Op Nine’s bag on the bed, pulled out the semiautomatic, and dropped it into my pocket. I opened one of the maps and spread it out over the bed while Op Nine watched.
“Are we fugitives?” he asked.
“More like refugees.”
He sighed. “We are at war, then?”
I nodded. I was trying to use the key on the map to figure out how many miles lay between us and Knoxville. The last time I had tried something like that was in the third grade, but I figured five hundred and fifty miles. I folded the map and jammed it into my back pocket.
“What is in Knoxville?” he asked.
“A certain Hyena that I’m gonna pop in the nose when I find him.”
He frowned. “A hyena?”
I nodded. “And the Holy Vessel of Solomon, I hope, because if I’m wrong and it isn’t, this war is over and the world is toast.”
43
Op Nine said he had to use the john, so I helped him into the bathroom and averted my eyes while he leaned against me and peed. Then he collapsed back onto the bed, breathing hard.
“I am too weak to travel,” he gasped. “Leave me.”