I went back upstairs and found my clothes in the bedroom. Somebody had washed and laid them on the small bed by the window. I pulled back the curtains to look out, but there was nothing to look at: The window was boarded up. Secure location. As if I would know where I was in France. The only way I’d know is if I looked out and saw the Eiffel Tower in the backyard.
I dressed and sat on the bed. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to go back downstairs. Being around Mike and his gang of spies or whatever they were made me feel kind of twitchy.
There was a soft tap on the door and Bennacio came in. He closed the door and sat down beside me.
“Do you trust them?” I asked.
“Would you?”
I thought about it. “No choice?”
“We must use the tools given us, even those that are double-edged.”
“How’d they find out about the Sword in the first place?”
“When the Sword was lost, Samson realized at once we would need their help. I counseled against it, but now I understand the bitter necessity of it, though it cost us our greatest loss since the founding of our Order.”
“I thought I caused that.”
He frowned at me. “I am not speaking of the Sword.”
“They’re not going to let you have it, are they?”
“I think not.”
“How’re you going to stop them?”
“I will do as I always have done: all that I must to protect it.”
“Bennacio, you can’t kill them.”
He sighed. “Long ago, Alfred, I took a solemn oath as binding as gravity. I know of no other way.”
“Well, I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to say, Bennacio. Maybe because I’ve never taken any kind of oath like that. I’ve never taken any kind of oath period.”
He looked at me with those deep-set, intense eyes.
“Why not?”
“I guess I never had the chance.”
“All of us have that chance. But we either choose not to or do not recognize it when it comes. On the plane, when I told you I believed all happens for a purpose, you thought of your uncle’s death, and you wondered how something so seemingly useless could serve any purpose. In the past, Alfred, men cast about for reasons to believe. Now we find reasons not to.”
“I’m not following you, Bennacio.”
“The human race has grown arrogant, and in its arrogance assumes nothing is beyond the power of its reason. If we see no purpose, it follows there must be no purpose. It is the fallacy of our times.”
“Bennacio,” I said. “You can’t just kill them. For every one of them you kill, they’ll send a dozen to come after you. Sooner or later they’ll find you, and I don’t care how powerful the Sword is, they’ll get it from you somehow. And then they’ll kill you.”
“Perhaps,” he answered. “Yet mercy has cost us much. If I had killed you the night you took the Sword, your friends and mine would still be alive and the Sword would still be safe.”
“Yeah, but I’d be dead.”
He laughed, then patted me on the knee and stood up.
“I think I shall miss you, Alfred Kropp, when this is over.”
He left me alone. I sat there for a few minutes, thinking. Mostly I was thinking the last knight was going to buy the farm. Either Mogart would kill him or the agents of OIPEP would.
I was convinced that Mike’s plan was to use Bennacio to help get the Sword, and then kill him (and probably me). That’s what Natalia meant when she told me I had sentenced Bennacio to death.
Thinking about Natalia made me feel especially rotten, though I’m not sure why. It’s not easy being hated by anybody, but it’s especially hard when the person who hates you also happens to be the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen.