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.”