I let the drapes fall-the view was too depressing-and turned on the TV. CNN was running a special report called Crisis in the Sky, and two talking heads occupied a split screen, a meteorologist and some guy from the government, arguing whether global warming was responsible for the fact that clouds now covered ninety-eight percent of the planet. That was more depressing than the view, so I flipped to the next channel. Its special was called Recent Storm Terror-The Al-Qaeda Connection. It looked like OIPEP's MEDCON was executing OP-FOOL'EM. I turned off the TV.

Op Nine was still typing away.

"I feel weird," I said.

"Hmmm." Some kind of satellite image occupied the top half of his screen; the bottom half contained the text of whatever he was typing.

"Maybe I've got jet lag. You know, flying all the way from the North Pole in an hour . . . that'll kill you."

"Hmmm-mmm."

I was fishing with that North Pole remark, but he didn't bite. I yawned. Some hunt this was turning out to be.

"Maybe I'll take a nap."

He didn't say anything. I went into the bedroom, kicked off my snow boots, and threw the parka onto the chair beside the bed. The room was stuffy. A radiator hissed under the window. The click-click-click of his typing continued. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again the radiator was still hissing, but the click-clicks had stopped. I sat up and looked at the clock. It was a little after three in the afternoon when I lay down; now it was a quarter past six.

I got up and went into the other room. Op Nine reclined on the sofa, long legs stretched out, one arm thrown over his eyes, breathing deeply.

He had left his computer on.

I stared at the dancing Microsoft flag for a few seconds, chewing on my bottom lip. What was the protocol if I got caught? Would Op Nine be compelled to shoot me? I couldn't picture Op Nine shooting me, but that may have been just a failure of my own imagination.

I could always say the thing was making a funny noise and I was just checking it out, making sure it was okay. Ashley told me they had lied to me and maybe this computer held the evidence to that.

I touched the touchpad and the desktop screen lit up. There were only three folders besides the recycle bin: one labeled "SATCOM Hookup," another called "Dossiers," and the bottom one, "Chart."

I dragged the pointer to the one labeled "Dossiers." I'd seen enough spy movies to know what a dossier was, and I wanted to see if he had one labeled "Kropp, Alfred." But after I double-clicked on the folder, a message popped up asking for a password. I closed the box.

Same thing with the SATCOM folder, the one I figured he was working on when I went to bed, since I saw the satellite image on the screen. I closed the password box, and almost didn't click on the third icon, figuring it would demand a password too.

But I did click on it, and up popped a Word document with this title page: OFFICIAL CHARTER.

OFFICE OF INTERDIMENSIONAL PARADOXES.

AND.

EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON.

Copenhagen

19.11.32.

[As Amended 05.10.78 & 04.05.01]

I glanced over my shoulder at Op Nine, who hadn't moved a muscle. I started to scroll through the big blocks of text, single spaced, with all sorts of acronyms and code language so it read like those tiny disclaimers they flash on the screen during car commercials. I looked at the bottom of the screen. The OIPEP Charter ran over two thousand pages.

I wasn't going to find any lies in this file or, if I did, I wouldn't be able to tell they were lies. There was one thing I was curious about, though, so using the edit function I searched for these words: "Section Nine."

And this is what I got: SECTION NINE.

9.1 At the director's discretion, one or more Company personnel may be designated as "Superseding Protocol Agent(s)" (SPA(s)). All Protocols relevant to protection of third parties, signatories, noncombatants, or informants as defined under Section 36.718 of this Charter do not apply to SPA(s).

9.2 SPA(s) are authorized under this Section to take any means necessary for mission success. For purposes of this Section, "any means necessary" is defined as not only the superseding of Company Protocols, but all law, international as well as the laws of the signatory and nonsignatory nations, including those relating to homicide and other serious offenses as defined in Section 2.34 of this Charter (e.g., theft, willful destruction of property, torture, etc.) 9.3 The Company and signatories to this Charter agree to hold harmless SPA(s) who commit acts that, in any other circumstances, might warrant the ultimate penalty, as long as those acts were performed with due diligence and in the SPA(s)' official capacity as Company operatives. No SPA(s) will be prosecuted for any act committed under the auspices of this Section and all signatories agree to harbor and protect any operative acting under this Section from hostile parties or nonsignatories who seek retribution, whether legally or illegally . . .

There was more; Section Nine ran on for twelve more pages, but I had seen enough. I closed the file, turned around, and saw Operative Nine sitting up on the sofa, watching me.

35.

I broke the awkward silence first.

"You're a SPA."

"And what does that mean?" he asked quietly. He didn't sound sarcastic.

"It means OIPEP's rules don't apply to you. Nobody's rules apply to you."

"You're forgetting the natural ones."

"Natural ones?"

"Gravity, for example. Gravity applies to me."

"I'm not trying to be funny here, Op Nine."

"Neither am I."

"Is that why nobody can know your name? So when you're done murdering, raping, and pillaging, there's nothing to hang on you because you don't officially, like, exist or something?"

"That much is true: I do not officially exist. There is no birth certificate, no hospital record, no valid driver's license, no passport, no Social Security card, no fingerprint record, no document-or witness, for that matter-of any kind anywhere that establishes or confirms my existence. Whole weeks pass, months even, when I forget what my name used to be, when I forget I even had a name. I am no one, Alfred, and my name is whatever it needs to be."

I backed up as he spoke, right into the door leading to the hallway-and freedom.

He stood up. "Alfred, listen to me. There is a very old saying: 'If it is necessary, it is possible.' Our organization is tasked with an extremely delicate and dangerous mission, making many distasteful things necessary, and I am the designated agent of necessity. I am the one who does that which must be done. That is all Section Nine means. I am the sole operative in the Company fully authorized to do what must be done, even if what must be done falls outside the normal boundaries of acceptable behavior."

"Oh, well, that's a nice way to put it!"

"It is the best way. The Operative Nine cannot hesitate to do what must be done to achieve the objective."

"It's a rotten job, but somebody's gotta do it?"

"Something like that."

"That's a phrase that applies to garbagemen, Op Nine!

Garbagemen don't murder people!"

"Neither do I."

"That's not what you told me. You told me you murdered somebody in Abkhazia."

"I never said I murdered them."

"You said you killed them."

"So I did."

"So you said it or so you killed them?"

"Both."

"Since when is killing somebody not murder? What if I get in the way of the mission . . . you'd kill me too, wouldn't you? Is that what they did in Abkhazia? Got in your way?"

"I'm not going to talk about Abkhazia."

"Why not? You said it wasn't classified."

"You asked if it was classified and I answered that it was painful. That is not the same as saying it wasn't classified."

"So it is classified? Why do you talk in circles like that? Look, I'm going to be honest with you, Op Nine. I'm a little freaked out right now. I've been lied to . . ."

"By whom? Who has lied to you?"

"I-I'm not sure, but somebody has."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Alfred."

"Well, of course you're going to say you don't know what I'm talking about! Even if you did know what I'm talking about, you're authorized to say you don't, and you probably would even if you weren't."

"Alfred, I think you still may be suffering from some lingering effects of the-"

"Oh, you bet. I've got lingering effects out the yin-yang! Kidnapped, nearly drowned, thrown from an airplane, shot, and my brain scooped out by something I don't even believe in! From the beginning you people haven't leveled with me. Mike didn't and you're not now. For all I know you lied to me about my mom."

"About your mom?"

"About her being dead. Maybe she really isn't dead. Maybe she's as alive as you and me and King Paimon."

"Alfred, your mother died when you were twelve years old, before any of-"

"I know that! Or I knew that! I don't know what I know anymore. I don't even know what I don't know! The inside of my head feels all crumbly, like stale birthday cake left out too long."

"I see," Op Nine said. He was frowning, staring at me intensely, which didn't help matters. I wasn't crying, but his face was distorted, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror; the earlobes looked particularly long and Goofy-like.

I went on. "But one thing I do know is that you people are hiding something. Something doesn't add up here."

I rubbed my temples. The room spun around my aching head. Now it was as if my brain were made of broken glass, like the glass in Betty Tuttle's hand that fell when Mr. Needlemier said I was worth four hundred million dollars, shattered into a thousand pieces, then slapped back together with glue.

"It doesn't add up. There's something you're not telling me, which is a kind of lie even if you're not telling a lie lie."

" 'Lie lie'?"

"None of it makes any sense. Why am I here? Why did you bring me, a fifteen-year-old kid with no qualifications whatsoever in the covert op department, on your big mission to find Mike and the Vessel? Tell me why I'm here, Op Nine. Give me one good reason and I'll shut up and we'll go get Mike, which there seems to be a very mysterious lack of, the getting part, since that was the reason we flew four thousand miles per hour in the first place to get here. Why are we hanging out in this hotel room? That's my question."

"We were waiting for nightfall."

"Well, it's almost seven o'clock. It oughtta be fallen by now."