by James Frey
The streak of fire was moving slowly from south to north, and it must have been far away from us if it looked so slow.
“This is it, guys,” John said, and looked around, then whispered, “Keep quiet.”
I turned to look and saw that the casino staff were joining us at the windows, looking in amazement at the ball of light. It looked like it was actually on fire, but I didn’t know much about meteors. This couldn’t be the same kind of thing that gave us a shooting star—those were quick and gone in an eye blink. This one was still moving across the sky.
“It’s gotta be a hundred miles away,” Bruce said. “At least.”
“Gonna touch down in Canada, I bet,” Eugene replied.
“Could be like the Tunguska event,” Rodney said. “Meteor slammed into Siberia fifty, sixty years ago.”
“I’ve heard about that,” John said, and laughed. “A lot of conspiracies about that.”
“Well,” Rodney said, “there’s a fool born every minute.”
The waitress touched the glass. “Do we know that that’s not a Russian missile? I mean, is there someone we need to call?”
“Who would we call?” the hostess answered.
“The police?”
“What are our local police going to do about it?” the hostess said. “Besides, I’m sure it’ll be all over the news.”
A moment later, as people were turning away and getting back to what they had been doing, there was an enormous crash, and all the windows shattered.
I ducked, and shards of glass flew at me, scratching the side of my face.
“Oh!” Mary shrieked. “Is everyone okay?”
“I think I’ve got something in my eye,” Bruce said. “Shit.”
The waitress had blood on her arm, and I saw where it was coming from: a daggerlike piece of glass, maybe three inches long, stabbed into her forearm, bleeding a steady, bright red.
Bruce was calling for water to flush out the glass from his eye as Mary found Julia bleeding from her forehead. I touched the back of my scalp, and a few drops of blood came back on my hands, but nothing stung as though there was glass embedded.
Barbara was checking Kat’s neck, where there was a small trickle of blood.
John grabbed me and whispered in my ear. “Get back to your room and make sure everything is packed. Spread the word.”
Mary and I shared a room at the hotel, and I tried to get her to leave with me, but she wanted to stay and help Bruce.
Every one of us was trained in first aid, because we’d be traveling in such small groups. Kat was a nurse, and we’d spent four or five hours a week learning first aid from her.
Someone ran into the restaurant with a white first-aid box. Kat took it from him and yanked it open. “I’m a nurse.”
She went to Bruce first. “Damn it. Why is there no saline in here?”
I moved to the waitress, but Walter was already there, using a cloth napkin to make a tourniquet. He made her sit down so she wouldn’t faint. The hostess was on the phone, dialing the police.
Mary was now standing above Bruce and Kat, and I grabbed her elbow, pulling her toward me.
“John wants us to go back to the room and get ready to leave.”
“I’m not going while Bruce is lying here with glass in his eye,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, and then moved on to the next bystanders—Julia and Jim. I told them what John had said, and they nodded and headed toward the exit. Eugene was next.
“What if this is real?” Eugene said, still staring out the window. “I mean, we’ve talked to John and Walter about this, but what if that meteor was a real Calling? That was pretty incredible.”
“If it’s a real Calling, then we need to get to the Players as soon as possible. We have to stop them from Playing or even going to the real Calling.”
“It’s still flying,” Eugene said, pointing out the window. “Where did the blast come from?”
“Sonic boom,” Walter said.
Sirens were going off now. I didn’t know where the police were going, but at some point they’d head here to the casino. The hostess had already called them.
“We have to get out of here, Eugene.”
“Not just you and me,” he said. “We all do.”
Through the window I saw a police car pull up in the parking lot, its red-and-blue lights flashing. The parking lot was full of broken glass—many of the cars had had their windows blown out too.
I pushed through the group, whispering to everyone to clear out, and I finally made it back to Mary.
“Cops,” I said. “The bank robbery. And that photo in Berkeley can still be traced to me. Come on. Kat’s taking care of Bruce.”
She looked at Bruce for several seconds and then followed me out of the restaurant.
CHAPTER SIX
Mary and I lay on the king-sized bed, the TV on, and we kept rotating through the channels in search of news about the meteor.
At long last there was a knock at the door. We both jumped.
She went to the peephole, and I grabbed my M1911 pistol off the desk, standing beside Mary. I flicked the safety off.
“It’s John,” she said, and undid the chain.
As she opened the door, I put the safety on and slid the gun into the back of my waistband. I was comfortable with guns now. We’d trained every day all summer—not only target shooting, but tactics for raids too. A lot of it made me think we were going overboard, that it was unnecessary to our plans, but Walter said that the Players had trained to do it, so we were going to train how to do it.
John came in the room, closing the door behind him.
“How’s Bruce?” Mary asked.
“He’s going to be fine,” John said. “Kat got the glass out, and we got out of there before the paramedics showed up.”
“I saw the cop car,” I said.
“We were gone from the restaurant before they even came upstairs. There was pandemonium in the casino, and the police headed that way first.”
Mary ran her fingers anxiously through her hair. “Is this going to change any of our plans?”
“No. Everything is the same as before. You and Bruce to Mexico. Mike: you, Kat, and Eugene to Turkey and Iraq.”
“I want to renew my objection to Eugene.”
“I know how you feel about him,” John said. “But you were there in the bank, and he did a great job. The gun shop was a fluke.”
“A fluke?” I said, raising my voice.
“Yes,” he said calmly. “A fluke. You’ve been holding on to that grudge all summer. It was a fluke, plain and simple.”
“Tommy died.”
“It could have been any one of us. We’re all risking our lives, Mike. Tommy knew that going into this.” John patted my shoulder. “Flights are tonight. I’ll see you there. Don’t let this change anything. We have work to do, so I want the two of you to smooth this out. We’re a team or we’re not. And if we’re not, the Players will take us apart.”
He turned and opened the door. “Barbara has your plane tickets and your share of the money. And don’t blow the money—you’ll need it for all your operations: getting from city to city, eating, getting safely out of Munich. Wait here for it. She’ll come by.”
I didn’t speak as the door closed, leaving Mary and me alone together.
“Eugene is going to be fine,” Mary said. “He’ll be good to have on your team.”
“You weren’t there at the gun store.”
“I feel like I was. You’ve told me about it so much. You need to get over it.”
“Get over it? It was Tommy’s life.”
“Mike, don’t do this. Not right now.”
I picked up my suitcase and put it on the bed. I unzipped it to check the contents, despite the fact that I had packed it days ago. There was everything in there for a trip to Turkey and Iraq. Guidebooks, maps, translation dictionaries, and dossiers on the Minoan and Sumerian lines. Mary was standing off to my right, closer to the door. I could
only see her in my peripheral vision. She wasn’t moving.
“The only person I want on my team is you.”
“Mike. You know that’s a bad idea. For so many reasons.”
“Because I’m better off without you?”
“We’ve talked about this, Mike. A lot. And remember two weeks ago?”
I knew what she was talking about. We’d been on a practice run—we trained constantly for every possible situation we could think of. This one had me, Bruce, Mary, Kat, and Eugene clearing an abandoned textile factory in Sacramento’s industrial district. We had all gone into the building with our guns ready, just as Walter and John had trained us. Bruce was the leader, Mary next in line, then Kat, Eugene, and me in the back. After we had cleared the ground floor, Bruce had me position myself behind a fifteen-foot loom, guarding the stairs and watching the door. He and Mary had gone upstairs. They were silent. We had trained for this kind of thing for months—how to walk quietly, how to communicate with hand signals—and we were good at it. I had been focused on the door just long enough for my mind to wander. I knew that this wasn’t real, and I was tired, and staring down the sights of my M14 carbine was getting old.
And then Mary had yelped and there’d been a clatter upstairs.
“That wasn’t a real situation,” I said now to Mary. “I wouldn’t have left my position if it had been a real situation.”
“I called out and you came running,” she said. “It was very sweet, but then Jim, Julia, and Rodney came up the stairs and killed us.”
“It wasn’t real. It was an exercise. I was calling a time-out.”
“What if it had been real? Would you still have come running?”
“That’s what I’m saying. I only did it because I knew that it was an exercise. You gashed your leg open. It was a good thing that Kat came up the stairs when she did so she could help you. You should have a little faith in me.”
“Mike,” she said, taking a few steps toward me, “I have faith that you’ll have my back anytime I’m in danger. I know that you’ll come to my rescue. But that is the exact opposite of what you needed to do there. You needed to stay where you were. And frankly, I don’t think a real situation will be any different from this.”
“So I’m supposed to be happy that you are going to Mexico with Bruce? That’s going to be safer?”
“What am I supposed to say, Mike? I’ve told you this before. You’re too protective of me, and it’s tactically dangerous.”
“‘Tactically dangerous’?” I asked, letting out a snort. “That sounds like something that Bruce would say.”
“So what if it does? Bruce is smart. He’s been training with us all summer. He has experience, and he’s seen the way you and I work together. And he’s worried about it. He’s worried about you.”
“You’re saying this was all his idea?”
“No. Why are you bringing all of this up right now? You’ve known about this change for six weeks.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. I’m just not ready for this. To leave you.”
Mary stared at me, her lips a straight line. “We’re going to see each other in Munich. This is just a bump in the road. We’ll be back together.”
She picked up her suitcase and left for the door.
“You need to wait for Barbara to get your ticket.”
“I’ll find her.”
She stopped at the door, and turned. “Mike, I like you. I like you a lot. We have something good together. Just trust me, okay?” She grabbed the doorknob and walked out.
I was left all alone in the room, my heart racing and my stomach suddenly sick.
I wanted to trust her. I wanted to trust all of this. But it was getting harder. I just wanted to believe we’d get to the end and move on from all this, after Munich, after the Players had been stopped and Endgame was over. I thought Mary and I could find a new life in a new country. Somewhere far away from the violence, my crimes, my family, everything about my previous life. We’d start over.
I cared about stopping Endgame. I believed in what we were doing, and so did she. She made me believe. But while I’d thought we were growing together, she was leaving me to work with Bruce. Because she trusted him more. Were she and Bruce . . . ?
Had it ever been real? Or was she just an expert recruiter?
Was she sleeping with me so that I’d fully commit to Zero line?
“No, damn it,” I said out loud. I had to trust Mary. I had to get all these thoughts out of my head.
There was a knock on the door, and for a brief moment I dared to hope that it was Mary coming back, but that thought was gone before I had time to walk to the door and look through the peephole. I knew she wouldn’t be there.
I had my pistol in my hand.
The figure outside my door was turned to look down the hall, and I couldn’t make out who it was.
With the gun in my right hand, I opened the door with my left and peered out.
“Hey, Mike,” Eugene said.
I let out a breath.
“Hey,” I said, letting him in. He’d spent a lot of time over the summer tanning, and with his stubbly beard he looked like he’d fit in well in the Middle East. I’d done the same, but I suddenly felt like I would be picked out easily. I had Greek ancestry on my dad’s side, but I didn’t know much about my mom’s side.
I walked back to the bed and put the pistol back on my suitcase.
“I have our tickets from Barbara.”
“Thanks,” I said, anger rising up in me again. Every time I saw Eugene, all I could think about was Tommy crumpled against the cinder-block wall, a shotgun blast in his chest, his green T-shirt turned dark brown.
And I saw the sheriff, and each one of the five bullets I’d fired into him.
Now, today, Eugene looked like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Kat and I are ready. You and Kat are going to Istanbul, and I’m heading to Baghdad. We want the invitations to be delivered as close as possible to each other, so you’ll prep in Turkey, set off your bomb, then immediately come join me and I’ll have the plans all made for Iraq.”
And now I’d be traveling alone with Kat, who I thought was great, but she wasn’t Mary. There was still a lot I didn’t know about Kat. I knew she was a nurse at a hospital in Oakland. I also knew that she had left a boyfriend to come be in Zero line. She had tried to recruit him, but he thought it was a bunch of bullshit. Like I had at first, until Mary convinced me. Kat abandoned him instead of turning her back on the rest of us. As bright and sunny as she seemed on the outside, there must have been a fierce zealousness in her. I was glad I was going to have her covering my back in Istanbul.
Eugene, on the other hand, was trouble. I doubted his ability to set up a good scenario for our Sumerian invitation even if he had pulled off the bank job so well. But, as I was quickly learning today, I wasn’t in control of anything that was happening.
CHAPTER SEVEN
We left the hotel, slipping out while workers were putting plywood in place of the broken windows. We went through a side door so we wouldn’t have to deal with the front desk. Everybody had scoured their rooms for any evidence that we had been there.
Mary was in the van with me as we drove to the airport, but she was two rows ahead, and she didn’t look back. Kat and Eugene were with me, Barbara was in the passenger seat, and all the other seats in the van were stacked with luggage. The others were crammed into our three other vehicles.
We drove in silence all the way to the airport. Bruce, driving the van, pulled to the curb of the loading area, and we all climbed out, making a large pile of everyone’s suitcases. Bruce then drove off to long-term parking.
After a few minutes Eugene said he had to have a smoke, and he bummed a cigarette off the skycap.
I approached Mary, who was turned away from me, standing alone, waiting for Bruce to come back.
“Hey,” I said. “Have a safe flight. Good luck. I’ll see you in Munich.”
&nbs
p; “You too, Mike,” she said.
“Mary . . .” I moved in front of her so she had to look at me. “Mary, I love you.” I pulled the gold heart necklace out of my pocket and placed it in her hand.
She looked defeated, her shoulders slumped and her face blank. “It’s beautiful. But we both have planes to catch. Please. Let’s wait until Munich.”
“Just take it.”
She nodded, put the necklace around her neck, and fastened it easily. The gold heart gleamed in the evening light.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“You’re beautiful.”
She hugged me. “Be careful, Mike.”
“You too.”
“I’ll see you in Germany.”
And with that she turned from me and walked away.
Everyone from Zero line was going through the airport at the same time, though we all acted according to our cover stories. Kat and I perused the shelves of a bookstore and let Eugene go through before we did. I took a few minutes to pick up a National Geographic magazine and a chocolate bar, let a few dozen people go ahead of us. Then Kat and I walked as confidently as possible to the security checkpoint, holding hands.
She was my girlfriend. We both went to UC–San Francisco, and we were taking a semester off to see the world and go to the Olympics. It was a good enough story.
As I walked through security, a police officer watched me the whole time.
I was acutely aware that the cop’s gaze was fixed on me.
I paused longer than I should have as the security guard checked my ticket, my mind completely focused on the cop, who was still watching me.
“All right,” the guard said tiredly. “Have a safe flight.”
As I walked past him, the cop approached. “Hey,” he said. “Where are you heading?”
I handed him my ticket.
“Istanbul,” he said, looking surprised. “What’s in Istanbul?”
“I will be, soon,” I said, smiling. “My girlfriend and I are traveling there to meet friends.” It was the story Kat and I had agreed on.
