“No, no. Keep driving.”
“Where am I going, exactly?”
“Canada.”
I looked over at him. “Canada?”
He sighed. “To Halifax, in Nova Scotia. I have friends there.”
“Jeez, Bennacio, I had no idea I was driving you all the way to Canada! Wouldn’t it have been easier just to fly to Spain?”
“The airports will be watched.”
“Won’t they be in Halifax too? I mean, wouldn’t they think of that?”
I wondered where exactly Halifax was in Nova Scotia. I wondered where Nova Scotia was. I didn’t ask him, though. He had a way of talking to me that sounded like he didn’t want to talk to me, like he was just being polite.
“Who are these friends in Halifax? The what-do-ya-call-’ems, OIPEP guys?”
“OIPEP is not my friend,” he said.
“Then what is it? What does OIPEP stand for, anyway?” He didn’t say anything, so my mind tried to fill in the blanks: Organization of Interested Parties in Evolutionary Psychiatry. But that didn’t make any sense.
“The knights were not the only ones who knew of the Sword’s existence,” Bennacio said. “We were its protectors, Kropp, but the Sword itself has many friends.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good. It’s good to have friends. I left my best friend behind in Salina, where I grew up. His name is Nick. So what happens once we get to Halifax? Are you crossing the Atlantic by boat?”
He didn’t say anything.
“What?” I asked. “Too slow? You guys probably have supersonic jets or something at your disposal.”
After driving in silence a while—that seemed to be the method Bennacio preferred—we hit some rain. Bennacio sipped his fountain drink, holding the tip of the straw against his lower lip with his upper, the straw pressing against his chin, not sucking but delicately drawing up the soda into his mouth. There was the gentle hissing of the rain and Bennacio slurping his drink, and those were the only two sounds for miles. It started to get to me.
“I was wondering,” I said, “who Mr. Samson was descended from.”
Bennacio sighed. “Lancelot,” he said wearily.
I decided not to worry if I was bugging him. I was getting tired of his Old World superior act and the way he talked to me like I was a little kid or somebody with a mental condition. And I was getting sleepy. And though it was a truly awesome car, I wasn’t used to driving long distances. I wasn’t used to driving, period.
“That’s the guy who stole Guinevere from King Arthur,” I said, like Bennacio might not know that little detail. “I guess none of this would have happened if he had controlled himself. Are you married, Bennacio?”
“No. Many of us marry in secret or not at all, thus our numbers have dwindled over the years.”
“How come?”
“Remember, Kropp, we are sworn to protect the Sword. To love another, to be bound by blood to another, that is to invite blackmail—or worse, betrayal. You mention Lancelot. Samson himself never wed because he could not bear the thought of endangering another human being.”
“There was something else I was wondering,” I said. “How did Mogart know about the Sword in the first place?”
“All Knights of the Sacred Order know.”
I looked over at him. He was staring at the rain smacking against the glass and his face was expressionless.
“Mogart was a knight?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“Samson expelled him.” He sighed. “Mogart did not take banishment well, as one might imagine.”
“Then why did Mr. Samson expel him?”
Bennacio hesitated before answering. “That was between Samson and Mogart.” He glanced over at me and then looked away. “It was only a matter of time until a man like Mogart appeared among us. We were fortunate over the centuries, but the ancient bloodlines became diluted over time. Our blood intermingled with that of lesser men, our valor has been tarnished by the desires of this world. The voices of the angels have faded and into the void the voice of corruption rushes.”
“What angels?”
“There were some in my Order, Kropp, who believed the Sword is actually the blade of the Archangel Michael, given to Arthur to unite mankind.”
I remembered Mr. Samson telling me that the Sword was not made by human hands.
“That didn’t turn out too good, did it?” I asked.
“It is certainly not the first time we have disappointed heaven,” Bennacio answered.
17
I stopped just outside of a little town in the Shenandoah Valley called Edinburg to pee and to find Bennacio something other than a corn dog to eat. The rain had slackened to a gray mist and the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. I had left Knoxville with just the clothes on my back, no jacket, no umbrella, and both would probably come in handy, especially in Nova Scotia, which I pictured as rainy and windswept and desolate.
I wondered if the Tuttles were looking for me back in Knoxville or if they even cared to look for me. I thought about missing school and about Amy Pouchard, and all of that—the Tuttles and Amy and school—felt to me like it had happened to somebody else, like the memories weren’t my memories but the hijacked memories of another kid. It was as if I left more than the little I had back in Knoxville. Somehow, I had left the me that made me me.
We ducked into a McDonald’s and Bennacio ordered a Big Mac and a Coke. He asked for some plasticware, and I wondered how he planned to eat a Big Mac with a plastic fork. I ordered a large Coke to keep me awake on the road and a fish sandwich. I waited in the car with the food while Bennacio used the pay phone outside the restaurant. He talked for about five minutes. His gait was thrown off by his wound and he moved slowly, as if each step cost him something.
He sat down, closed the door, and said, “Lock the doors, Kropp.”
I was about to ask him why, when the back doors opened and two big men slid into the backseat.
“Too late,” Bennacio said.
Something sharp pressed into the side of my neck. A voice behind me whispered, “Drive.”
I backed out of the space using the rearview, where I could see the side of someone’s square-shaped head and the large hand pressing the black dagger against my neck. The skin over every inch of my body was tingling. The other guy was sitting back in his seat, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Turn right.”