AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Right now?”
“Immediately.”
“I’m gonna have to put the phone down.”
“That’s quite all right.”
I set the phone down and turned on the TV. The BBC news had just started. About five minutes into the show, they ran a story about the American attorney general’s news conference that afternoon. He was announcing an update to the FBI’s most wanted list. Before they flashed the photograph on the screen, I knew what I would see.
It was my picture.
The attorney general was saying I was an international fugitive with ties to terrorists and was responsible for the deaths of sixteen British and American personnel in an attempt to destroy one of England’s most famous national treasures. Then he announced the Justice Department was offering a six-million-dollar reward for information leading to my capture and conviction.
The big-headed loser was finally tops in something: I was the most-wanted fugitive in the entire world, but all I could think of was how difficult it would be now to assemble my summit of world leaders and declare the founding of the Kingdom of Kropptopia.
I turned the set off and went back to the phone.
“I’m back,” I said.
“Congratulations, Mr. Kropp. You are a celebrity. Perhaps you will even make the cover of People magazine.”
“How—how did you find me, Mr. Mogart?”
I walked over to the window as I talked. I pulled back the curtain, expecting to see a SWAT team or their British counterparts storming the building. But all I could see was the empty parking lot and some woods. To my left, the dirty yellow lights of London glowed on the horizon.
“A fifteen-year-old boy—and not a particularly clever boy at that—alone in a strange country, afraid and without friends, driving a car equipped with a Global Positioning System—how difficult do you think that really is?”
“I guess not too difficult,” I said.
I sat back down on the bed.
“I know what you want, Mr. Mogart. But, see, if I give it to you it’s going to mean the end of the world. I’m only fifteen, like you said, and it’s really important to me that the world sticks around for a while, at least until I’m forty. Maybe fifty, even.”
“Ah, but you are missing the point, Alfred,” Mogart said. It was the first time he had called me by my first name. “Whether you live to fifty is of little importance to me. I want only one thing, so you see we are both equally disadvantaged. You have something I want and I have something you want.”
“What?” I asked, since I couldn’t think of a single thing I had left that mattered. Everybody who mattered to me was dead. But that wasn’t true and the funny thing was that, of the two of us, Mogart was the only one who knew it.
“Kropp.”
It took a second for it to sink in that the voice on the other end wasn’t Mogart’s. It wasn’t even a man’s voice.
“Kropp,” she whispered again.
“Natalia?”
I heard a little screech, then silence, and Mogart’s voice came back.
“Understand, Mr. Kropp, that I care not for what I have, as you care not for what you have. I would sacrifice my life for what you possess, as you would sacrifice yours for what I possess. To my mind, there is only one way to satiate our particular desires. Are you following me, Mr. Kropp?”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to come here and take it from me?” My voice was shaking badly.
“Why should I come there for it, Mr. Kropp, when you are bringing it to me?”
Just then I heard a sharp rap on the door. I jumped and gave a little yelp.
Mogart said, “Someone is at your door. Open it.”
“I have a gun,” I said. “I’ll use it.”
