End Game

by John Gilstrap

  Jonathan sighed and took a healthy pull on his scotch. “Enjoy the show,” he said.

  The doctor’s house looked much bigger on the inside than it did from the exterior—and far more opulent. A wide, round foyer led to a sweeping staircase to the second floor. The floor beneath Jolaine’s feet appeared to be marble—some sort of white stone. Now in brighter light, Sarah’s blood seemed even redder—not just where it flowed from her body, but where it smeared on every surface it touched.

  The rooms that Jolaine could see screamed serious money. Overstuffed furniture atop Oriental carpets. From the masculinity of the décor and darkness of the color palette, Jolaine suspected that Wilkerson did not have a woman in his life. The place looked more like a country-club cigar room than a home.

  She considered asking where they were taking Sarah, but didn’t when she realized that she’d know soon enough. “Are you still with us, Graham?” she asked without looking back. When he didn’t answer, she threw a glance over her shoulder. He seemed dazed by the crimson smears on the floor.

  “Graham!” she shouted. It startled him. “Please come with us. Come help your mom.”

  “We should clean this,” he said.

  Jolaine felt a tug in her chest. The kid was losing it. Maybe she owed him a hug and a shoulder to cry on, but they didn’t have the time, and the doctor wasn’t slowing down.

  “Later,” she said. “I really need you to come with us. Please.”

  Wilkerson pulled on a giant picture on the wall that swung open to reveal a hidden panel, which in turn led to an elevator door. “There’s only one way down,” he said as they stepped into the elevator. “You’re coming or you’re staying, but I’m not waiting for either one of you.”

  “Graham!”

  That seemed to break his spell. He looked up.

  “Now. Please.”

  He started walking again.

  Wilkerson reached past Jolaine to pull the door closed without them, and she pushed back. She didn’t get why he needed to be such an asshole, but she’d kill him before she left Graham alone.

  Five seconds later, Graham joined them, and Jolaine pulled the door closed herself. Wilkerson pushed the bottom of two buttons, and the car jerked. It wasn’t till they were moving that Jolaine noticed the size of the elevator car. Like the house itself, it was bigger than she was expecting. Big enough to accommodate a stretcher.

  The elevator jerked to a stop, and Wilkerson nodded to the doorknob near Jolaine’s hip. “Open it, please,” he said.

  The door opened onto a doctor’s office—a surgical suite, really, complete with tile walls and floors, lights suspended from the ceiling, and an operating table.

  “Wow,” she said. An understatement.

  “I have a very limited yet lucrative practice,” Wilkerson said. “Uncle Sam likes to take care of his own.” He led Sarah to the table, turned her, and then hoisted her faceup onto the stainless-steel surface.

  She winced and yelled at the jostling. Jolaine thought it good news that she could respond to stimuli.

  “Be careful!” Graham said. “You’re hurting her.” He rushed to the table to be near her head. “You’re going to be okay, Mom.”

  Wilkerson pivoted to a nearby sink and turned on the water by nudging the knee-operated valve. “We’re going to need you to say your good-byes and move away,” he said. “I need to evaluate the wound.”

  “Are you working alone?” Jolaine asked.

  “For the next few minutes, yes. I have a team on the way.” He nodded to a pair of blunt-tipped scissors on the counter next to the sink. “Cut her shirt off for me, will you?”

  Now Jolaine saw why he didn’t want a kid around. To care for wounds, they needed to be exposed, and no boy needed to see his mother’s naked torso. More than that, no child needed to see a parent’s bullet wounds.

  “Can you please stand over there?” Jolaine said to Graham as she returned with the scissors. “I need to take your mom’s shirt off.”

  “No,” he said. “I want to stay with her.”

  Sarah turned her head to face her son and smiled. “I’ll be okay, sweetie,” she said. “They just need to work on me a little. You don’t want to see that. Besides, they’ll be giving me something soon to help me sleep.”

  Graham’s face turned red. “Are you going to die?”

  “No, I’m going to be fine,” she said. “The doctor is going to take good care of me.”

  “I don’t like him,” Graham said.

  She smiled again. “Some doctors are just like that. It’s late and he’s tired.” She ran a bloody hand through his hair, streaking it. “I love you.”

  Tears tracked his cheeks now. “I love you, too,” he croaked.

  Sarah lowered her hand. “Go on now,” she said.

  Graham looked up at Jolaine, who put a hand on his shoulder and pressed just a little in the direction of the plastic chair in the corner. He seemed smaller than he was before. Younger.

  Jolaine jumped when Sarah’s hand clamped her wrist. The grip was stronger than she’d expected.

  “Bring him back,” she said. “Never mind. Graham!” she shouted. “Come on back, baby.”

  He all but leaped back to his mother’s side. “I’m here, Mom,” he said. “Right here.”

  Sarah pulled a bloody piece of paper from her pocket—the very piece of paper, Jolaine realized in a flash of panic, that Gregory had given Bernard when he spilled into the front door.

  “Take this,” Sarah said to her son.

  Jolaine reached out to intercept. “No,” she said.

  Graham shoved her. “Get out of my way,” he said.

  Jolaine didn’t know what the paper was, but she knew that people had died for it, and that her most pressing job was to keep Graham from dying, too. “Really, Sarah?” she said. “He’s your son.”

  Sarah made no indication that she’d heard. “Take this,” she said to Graham.

  “What is it?” He seemed to sense the danger, too.

  “Please,” Sarah said. “It’s important.”

  “I’ll take it,” Jolaine said.

  Graham and Sarah replied in unison, “No!”

  Wilkerson stepped up to the table. “I told you to get her clothes off.”

  “Leave us alone for a moment, Doctor,” Sarah said, grunting through a spasm of pain.

  “You’re going to die if we don’t get that wound stabilized.”

  “It’s my life to lose,” Sarah snapped. “Two minutes.” Without waiting for an answer, she rocked her head to readdress Graham, and she thrust the note closer. “Do you remember the protocol?”

  Graham froze. Terror invaded his face. He said, “Um.”

  “You do, don’t you?” Sarah said.

  Jolaine asked, “What are you talking about? What protocol?”

  Sarah stayed focused on her son. “You remember, don’t you, Graham? You always remember.”

  Graham nodded.

  “Sarah, I must insist,” Jolaine said. “Whatever this protocol is, whatever the content of the note, if it endangers—”

  “Shut up, Jolaine,” Sarah snapped. “Take this, Graham.” She thrust the note into his hand. “Look at it. Look at it carefully.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “For crying out loud,” Wilkerson said. “Look at the damn thing. The quicker you do, the better chance I have of saving her life.”

  Graham took the note and opened it. When Jolaine tried to peek, he angled away so she couldn’t see. The glimpse she did catch revealed a long string of numbers and letters. As far as she could tell, it wasn’t an equation, and it spelled nothing.

  As Graham studied the paper, trying to make sense out of it, she realized that Sarah had snared her son in a trap.

  When Graham looked up from the paper, Sarah smiled. “You memorized it, didn’t you?” She laughed and triggered another spasm. “You can’t help it.”

  Jolaine knew it was true. Graham’s version of photographic memory placed him in
the one percentile of the one percentile. To read was to remember forever. He had no control over it.

  “Give me the paper back now,” Sarah said.

  After looking at it one more time, Graham handed it back. Sarah stuffed it into her mouth and swallowed. “Execute the protocol,” Sarah said. To Jolaine, she added, “Remember your mission, too.”

  “What is this, Sarah?” Jolaine demanded. “Why is all this happening? You owe me that much.”

  “The protocol,” Sarah said again. “Graham knows the code and the protocol. Repeat it only in person, son. That’s very important. In person, not over the phone.”

  “But the protocol is a phone call,” Graham said. “That’s all it ever was.”

  “You’ll have to meet. The man on the other end will know what to do. Just follow his directions.”

  Jolaine stepped in again. “Sarah, he is not meeting anyone unless I know what he’s walking into. Is this code, as you call it, the reason why people are dying?”

  “Follow the protocol,” Sarah repeated. “Once the loop is closed, the killing should stop. There’ll be no reason. Jolaine, protect Graham.”

  “Sarah, this isn’t fair. I can’t protect him if—”

  Behind them, the mechanics of the elevator hummed. Jolaine’s hand jerked to her holster, and one second later, her Glock was in her hand. She pushed Graham across the room and made herself as big as possible in the space between him and the door.

  “That’s my team arriving,” Wilkerson said.

  From a two-handed isosceles stance, she centered her sights on the middle of the door. “They need to pray that they don’t have weapons in their hands,” she said.

  “For God’s sake,” Wilkerson said. “Take a breath. We don’t need any more shooting.”

  Jolaine didn’t bother to respond. She trusted her reserve and her resolve. She wouldn’t shoot at anyone who didn’t need shooting. Tonight, that bar was dropping lower by the minute.

  The elevator hydraulics hissed, and then there was a soft thump. Two seconds later, the door opened. She moved her finger from the pistol’s frame to its trigger. If it came to that, she could rain down ten rounds in a little under four seconds, every one of them drilling a hole within an inch of where she wanted it to drill.

  The first man out of the elevator didn’t look like a doctor. With gray hair and a jet-black beard that was a throwback to the Civil War, he looked like a sixties-era beatnik. “Show your hands or die where you stand!” Jolaine yelled.

  The guy jumped. Had there not been three more men plugging the entrance behind him, he might have bolted back through the door. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he yelled. He held his hands out in front of him, his fingers splayed to ward off the attack. “I’m a doctor.”

  “Stop!” Wilkerson bellowed. “Jesus Christ, these are my colleagues. Put your gun away!”

  Jolaine held her aim long enough to assess each of the faces coming off the elevator. Every one of them looked like they’d be more comfortable in front of a video game than engaging in a gunfight muzzle to muzzle.

  Finally, she moved her finger outside the trigger guard and moved the weapon to low-ready—not aiming at anyone in particular, but still pointing at the floor in their general direction, just in case a target presented itself.

  “Don’t pay attention to her,” Wilkerson said. “She’s part of the Community, she’s scared, and she’s about to leave.”

  Behind her, Graham grabbed a fistful of the back of her shirt. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew that it was an appeal for help. Still not ready to re-holster, she lowered the Glock a little more.

  “I think we’re all right, Graham,” she said. This would be over soon, one way or the other.

  The arriving team moved to surround Sarah Mitchell. In seconds, it was as if Jolaine and Graham didn’t even exist. It was actually the lack of attention that convinced her that it would be safe to holster her weapon. When it was secure, she turned her attention to Graham, looking him in the eye.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  He shrugged and made a jerky motion with his head. It might have been a nod, or it might have been just a twitch. His brain still wasn’t processing it all.

  “Here it is, Graham,” she said. “We’re going to have to leave. The doctors will care for your mom, but there’s no place for us here. We need to move on.”

  The terror in the boy’s face deepened and multiplied. “Where are we going?”

  The truthful answer was I don’t have any idea. Instead, Jolaine said, “We’ll find a hotel room. We’ll kind of hide for a while and see what happens.”

  “Who are we hiding from?”

  Damn good question. “We don’t know yet. What was on that piece of paper? What did it mean?”

  Graham shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. Tears balanced on his eyelids. “Mom said it was a code, so I guess it’s a code. But I don’t know what it means.”

  “Please don’t lie to me, Graham. Not tonight.”

  “I’m not lying, Jolaine. I can tell you that it was a string of letters and numbers—I could even recite them for you—and according to Mom, they’re some kind of code, but beyond that, I have no idea what they are.”

  “Why are they important?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  She believed him. “It’s time to go now.”

  “What about Mom?”

  Jolaine ignored that question and looked to the crowd that had gathered around Sarah. “Doctor Wilkerson!” she said. “I’m going to need a car.”

  A voice from the clinical scrum said, “Find the kitchen upstairs. There are a set of keys on the hook by the door to the garage. Take whichever car you want.”

  Really? It was that easy? So much about this just didn’t make sense.

  “Let’s go,” Jolaine said. She put her hand back on Graham’s arm.

  “But what about Mom?”

  “Now,” Jolaine said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Maryanne was waiting for him at the base of the JFK bust that to Jonathan’s eye was the single ugly piece of artwork in the building. It looked like mud balls that had been crammed together. From a distance, it resembled the countenance of the thirty-fifth president of the United States, but up close it looked like an elementary school art project gone wrong.

  “This really is important,” she said as he approached within earshot.

  Jonathan gestured toward the door that led to the terrace. It was a flawless night in Washington. The cherry blossoms had bloomed a few weeks ago, but the stifling humidity and heat that so defined the capital city still lay in the future. The terrace offered a spectacular view of the Potomac River.

  He took another hit of his scotch. At this rate, it wasn’t going to last long. “I’m all ears,” he said. “What’ve you got?”

  “First some background,” Maryanne said. She looked soft for a Fibbie, too feminine. “You know that the Soviet Union collapsed back in the eighties.”

  “I believe I heard the rumor.”

  “Well, when it fell, it didn’t fall softly. For years, the US has been running a network of informants in the former Soviet Republics—both the friendly ones, and the other ones.”

  “If that’s supposed to surprise me, you’ve missed the mark,” Jonathan said.

  “Thing is,” she continued, “the Russians are slouching back to their old ways. I’m sure you heard the news story a few months ago about the Russian sleeper cells that were operating here and in Canada. They brought down that airliner in Chicago before the Mounties took them out.”

  “I remember reading something about that,” Jonathan said. It seemed inappropriate to mention that that had been his op. The fact that she didn’t know told him that Wolverine had been appropriately circumspect in the information she shared.

  “We have every reason to believe that nothing remains of the Movement, as they called themselves. But as cultural and religious tensions increase, the chatter has ele
vated immensely. We know that other cells exist, and for that reason, we continue to develop and run sources.”

  Jonathan checked his watch. So far nothing in this conversation trumped the Puccini he was missing. “You know that I don’t work for Uncle Sam anymore, right? I’m out of the business of giving much of a shit about terrorist cells. I pay taxes for that stuff.”

  Maryanne took a breath. “One of our most prolific operators was killed tonight. Bernard Mitchell. He was a nuke expert.”

  Jonathan’s neck hairs rose. If this pretty young thing worked for Wolverine, then she knew better than to throw out details that weren’t relevant. “A nuke expert for whom?” he asked. “Our side or theirs?”

  She hesitated. “Both.”

  “Okay, which side did he love more?”

  “Ours,” she said. “We’re almost positive of that.”

  In Jonathan’s experience with government-speak, the difference between almost positive and we don’t have a freaking clue was barely discernible.

  “At this stage, we know very little that is concrete, but what we do know is disturbing. Bernard Mitchell is dead, and we received a panic code from their house, presumably when the attack was happening. Judging from the amount of damage done to the home, and the number of bullet holes and bloodstains, it was a hell of a fight, and more than just good guys were killed.”

  “Did Bernard live alone?” Jonathan asked. He felt himself being drawn in.

  “No, and that’s even more disturbing. We know nothing of the whereabouts of his wife, Sarah, their son, Graham, or an au pair named Jolaine. They have disappeared, and so has one of the Mitchells’ cars. A BMW.”

  “Doesn’t the smart money say they got away?”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes,” Maryanne said. “But there are protocols in place for events such as this, notifications to be made by survivors of a hit.”

  Jonathan considered where the conversation was going. “Let me guess. None of them were implemented.”

  “Exactly. They were to call a central number, and the person on the other end of the call would have given them specific instructions on what to do next.”