The Savior's Game (The Daniel Byrne Trilogy Book 3)

by Sean Chercover

  The young man stuffed the hundred in his pocket and jerked his chin at the curtained doorway in back.

  “Make yourself at home.”

  The back room was long and narrow, furniture old but solid. Along the wall to Daniel’s right stood a row of ten wooden tables, each with a chessboard, a timer, and two chairs. On the left were six similar setups at the back, and a small sitting area up front with two red leather wing chairs and a coffee table laden with chess books and magazines.

  Only one table was occupied—a blond ponytailed girl of about ten, her back to the room, playing against a rumpled man in his late sixties who spoke with a thick Russian accent. Daniel shuffled through the magazines on the coffee table while eavesdropping on their game.

  The Russian said, “You try your best and you have fun, girl. Playing has to be fun; fun can’t all hinge on winning.”

  “It can for me,” said the girl. “Winning is fun. Losing sucks donkey balls.”

  “You’re eleven, Libby.”

  “So? Eleven-year-olds aren’t all stupid. Losing sucks and winning is fun. That’s the way it is. I need to learn to play better so I can win. I don’t need the Zen master routine.”

  “Does your mother know you talk like this?”

  “Oh, I’m way worse with her.” The girl giggled just like a normal eleven-year-old. “Makes her totally crazy.”

  The Russian shook his head. “You might consider taking it a little easy on the mere mortals in your midst, clever girl. Especially those of us who’ve taken shits older than you.” He moved a chess piece, putting it down with sharp authority. “Let’s see you get out of this one, Bobby Fischer. And if you can’t get out of it, count this day as donkey balls.” He slapped the button on the timer. “You have thirty minutes to consider your options. Take your time.”

  Daniel smiled to himself, plucked a magazine off the pile, and sat at a nearby table, facing the curtained doorway, his back to the man and the girl. He flipped through the magazine and stopped on a puzzle that looked interesting, arranging the pieces on the board in front of him to match the illustration on the page.

  He didn’t really know a chess problem from a chess puzzle, although he knew there was a difference between the terms. They often had names that sounded like the titles of Cold War thrillers, and chess hobbyists loved to dissect and debate them, but Daniel wasn’t into all that. He just enjoyed setting up the board and trying to figure out what he would do if he found himself in such a situation.

  He put the magazine aside and examined the options on the board in front of him. He could swap bishop for bishop and gain nothing. He could take both knight and bishop, and gain some real estate with his bishop, but it would cost him his queen. He could lay a trap for Black’s rook, but most players would see through it.

  Behind him, the Russian said to the girl, “Twenty-five minutes and counting. Remember, it isn’t just about how my move has affected your strategic aims. Try to discern what my move reveals about my strategic aims. Keep working it. I shall return.” He pushed his chair back, walked to the sitting area at the front of the room, and settled into one of the leather wing chairs. He watched as Daniel moved different pieces, reexamined the board, and pulled them back in turn. Each time Daniel auditioned a different move, the Russian let out a dramatic sigh. Finally, he said, “You are a terrible chess player.”

  “Still learning the game,” said Daniel.

  “We are all still learning. But you are truly shit at it.” The Russian groaned as Daniel pulled back his queen. “Perhaps you should consider checkers.”

  Daniel put his queen down and looked the man in the eye. “Is this how you prospect for students, Vasili? Because, if you don’t mind my saying, you are truly shit at it.”

  The Russian laughed as he stood and approached the table. “Nonsense, Daniel. Americans love to be abused by a Grandmaster. It makes them feel legitimate.”

  Daniel shook the offered hand. “It’s good to see you.” He gestured Vasili into the chair opposite.

  “I cannot honestly say the same. I had hoped you’d send an envelope for a few years, then a letter saying it was no longer necessary.”

  “So had I. But it’s still good to see you.”

  Vasili returned the sentiment with a crooked smile. “I thought you had quit the spy game and retired to some undisclosed tropical paradise, trying to die by skin cancer.” He nodded at Daniel’s face. “Good start on that, by the way.”

  “Seems the game hasn’t quit me.”

  Vasili looked at Daniel with genuine sadness. “Whatever they’re offering you, it isn’t enough.”

  “It wasn’t an offer.” Daniel dug in his pocket, slid his locker key across the table. “I need it now, Vasili.”

  The Russian looked at the key but didn’t pick it up. “That is so American of you. Ready! Fire! Aim! should replace E pluribus unum—that one doesn’t really fit anymore, if it ever did.” A perfunctory laugh at his own joke, and then his face grew serious. “You could’ve rented a secure locker for a lot less, my friend. You’ve already paid for my consultation, so at least allow me to consult, before rushing off to your death. You know coming back will draw their fire.”

  “I’m already drawing their fire.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. Two-thirty this morning, actually. And the man they sent is still out there. You know how this works—if I go to ground, they’ll just send him again. And they’ll send a wetwork team for backup.”

  “They?”

  “The Council, probably.”

  “Probably?”

  “They’ve got the obvious motive.”

  “But you don’t know it’s the Council.”

  “No,” Daniel admitted. “I don’t know.”

  “All the more reason to pause. Look at you; you haven’t even slept. Your judgment is compromised. You need to get safe and get rest, then consider your options with a clear head. If you don’t even know who they are, then you can’t say with certainty that it wasn’t the Foundation who sent the mechanic.”

  “I’ll ask Carter about that when I see him.”

  Daniel didn’t really think Carter Ames was behind the attempt on his life. Carter’s Fleur-de-Lis Foundation had put a lot into recruiting him and training him as a field operative. And it had paid off. Daniel’s work had enabled the Foundation to stop the Council from doing great harm to the world.

  After Daniel killed Conrad Winter and quit the game, Raoul Aharon came to see him in Barbados. Raoul had scouted Daniel for the Foundation, supervised his training, and been his handler. He invited Daniel to take six months of R and R, said to consider it paid leave. Daniel made it clear he had no interest in returning, but Raoul shrugged it off. And the Foundation still put money in Daniel’s bank account twice a month.

  Clearly, they wanted him back in the fold, and he doubted anybody in Ames’s inner circle had gone rogue and ordered a hit on him, but in any organization the size of the Foundation, there would inevitably be factions and power plays. You could count on human nature to rear its ugly head eventually. So he couldn’t rule it out completely.

  Most likely, the Council for World Peace had sent the gunman. Perhaps they were brewing some new plan to harness AIT, and had decided to take out the guy who stopped them last time before breaking the truce with the Foundation. Or their motive could be as simple as revenge for Conrad Winter’s death, to make Daniel an example of what happened if you crossed the line.

  Daniel had in fact given the Council plenty of motive, even before he even knew of the Foundation’s existence. The Council’s top project had been to harness and monopolize the AIT phenomenon, so when Tim Trinity’s ability to predict future events became known to the public, they sent Conrad Winter to silence Trinity.

  At the time, Daniel had been an investigator for the Vatican’s Office of the Devil’s Advocate, testing and debunking miracle claims around the world. The Vatican didn’t want a Pentecostal televangelist con man leading the world astray,
so they sent Daniel to debunk his estranged uncle. But miracle or not, what was happening to Tim Trinity was real. Daniel abandoned the priesthood and dedicated himself to keeping his uncle alive.

  Conrad Winter won that battle, and if Daniel had gone on to live the rest of his life as a civilian, the Council would’ve forgotten all about him. But after being raised by a religious con man, Daniel had spent much of his life searching for God, for proof, and now he’d found . . . something.

  A clue to the bigger picture.

  So after Tim’s death, Daniel joined the Foundation, investigating the AIT phenomenon, searching for answers. And that meant facing off against Conrad Winter and the Council again.

  Daniel won that round.

  “Vasili, I know what you’re gonna say, and I appreciate it, but my needs are a little more immediate. I gotta find the guy who came for me and take him down fast, find out who’s behind him. And then I need to climb a rung up the ladder and visit pain upon whoever that person is. I’m not rejoining the game, I’m just reestablishing the truce.”

  “And what if it isn’t the Council? What if the Foundation is behind it?”

  “Then I need to know that, too.”

  The Russian shrugged, staring at the key on the table. “Fine. You don’t want to listen to reason. But I’m going to tell you a story first, and you are going to hear it.”

  “Make it brief, I’ve got somewhere to be.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a knot. This is the story of a man named Gregorovitch—the greatest fighter of wild beasts since King David. His body looked like a drunken subway map, a crisscrossing network of scars, but he never lost a fight. Gregorovitch once killed two black bears with a broken hockey stick. Another time he fought a cougar, using a bowie knife—the cougar ran off so he didn’t score a kill that time, but it was still a win, and his streak of wins continued unbroken. He killed a wolverine and a six-foot catfish with his bare hands.”

  “Not at the same time, I hope.”

  “Very funny. Gregorovitch held trophy hunters in disdain, said he would never kill an animal without giving the beast a decent chance of killing him. And he chose his weapons accordingly. He became famous, and Russian mobsters got very rich making book on his fights.”

  Daniel looked at his watch. “I’m gonna die of old age before you get to the punch line, man. I get it: Gregorovitch was a tough, crazy dude, and probably not on the SPCA’s Christmas card list.”

  “Yes, so what happened: A Russian oil billionaire—former high-ranking KGB man—offered Gregorovitch five million Euros to fight an adult male Komodo dragon. Five million, in a Swiss bank account. But it wasn’t about the money for Gregorovitch; he wanted to go down in history as the world’s greatest beast fighter, wanted to surpass even King David. He spent a week studying every available video of Komodo dragons—fighting each other, attacking humans, hunting prey. He returned to the billionaire and said he would do it, provided he could wear armored boots and gauntlet gloves. And for his weapon, he chose a samurai sword.”

  “The man had style,” said Daniel.

  “More style than brains,” said Vasili. “A Komodo dragon’s mouth is one of the most toxic places on the planet—one bite guarantees a deadly bacterial infection.” He caught Daniel’s look. “Yes, you knew that. So the billionaire agreed, and a dirt-floor octagon was built in a warehouse outside Riga, seating for two hundred spectators. To get a seat, you had to place a bet of more than one hundred thousand US dollars, and the place was packed like jam. For a bet of ten thousand, you got a password to log in and watch the fight streaming live on the web. Over a thousand people watched online.”

  Vasili stopped talking.

  Daniel said, “And?”

  “The fight lasted twenty-three seconds. Gregorovitch killed the beast—shoved the samurai sword straight down its throat. But he was bitten, spent his few remaining days in mind-breaking agony as sepsis set in and devoured his body from the inside. Before dying, he only wanted it confirmed that he would go out with an undefeated record, because he outlived the beast.”

  Vasili picked up the key and stood. “I’ll get your kit bag now. But think on it. Whether your assassin was sent by the Foundation or the Council, it doesn’t really matter. In either case, there’s no way you can go up against them and live. Even if you take out a couple of their top men, what is that to them? Others stand by to pick up the reins. The game isn’t just rigged in their favor, Daniel. They own the entire game board. You can’t win.”

  5

  It was just before sunrise when the voltage meter beeped in Daniel’s hand. Some appliance—toaster oven, coffee maker, or maybe treadmill—had been switched on in the brownstone below. Which meant Carter Ames was up and about, and the interior motion detectors were now switched off.

  Daniel uncocooned from the thin metallic emergency blanket, folded it up small, and stowed it back in the kit bag beside him on the rooftop, along with the voltage meter. The windows and doors would still be armed, but he had another gizmo for that.

  He stood and stretched his back, looking through the steam clouds of his breath across the rooftops of the neighboring brownstones along East Seventy-Fourth Street, then at the skyscraper skyline to the south. He scooped up the bag, walked to the angled skylight window on his right, and pulled out the other gizmo. It was smaller than a pack of cigarettes. A simple black plastic box with three little green lights on top and a toggle switch on the side, packed with electronic wizardry.

  The switch had three positions—Off, Seek, and Send. Daniel switched it to Seek and ran the box slowly around the perimeter of the skylight window’s frame, stopping when the tiny green lights came alive. He peeled the waxy tape off the adhesive backing, pressed the unit to the window frame at that exact spot, and held it for a full revolution of his watch’s second hand.

  Then he switched it to Send.

  The lights went dark for less than half a second, then came back on—one, two, three—followed by a quiet beep, confirming that the device was locked on and transmitting.

  Four and a half minutes to pick the lock—thinking, Too slow, out of practice—and then Daniel had the skylight window open.

  He gripped the edge of the window frame and lowered himself into the darkened room, kit bag slung on his back, shoes tied by their laces to his belt, Sig Sauer P232 tucked in his right coat pocket. He extended his arms for the shortest possible drop, then let go, landing soft-footed on the plush padded carpet.

  Rich people like their comforts, like their houses quiet. But a quiet house makes for a quiet incursion.

  He waited for his eyes to adjust. He was standing in a well-appointed guest bedroom, not recently used. He peeled his gloves off, shoved them in his left pocket, and blew warm air into his cupped hands, bringing them up to room temperature. He reached into his right pocket for the pistol.

  Gun in hand, he crept out into the hallway, light filtering up the stairwell from the floor below. Staying tight to the wall, minimizing the creaking underfoot, he walked to the staircase, and down.

  On this level he was greeted by the smell of coffee, rising from the kitchen downstairs. Halfway down the hall, a door on the left stood open a few inches. He paused at the door. Inside was the master bedroom, lights on, bed unmade. With his ear to the gap, he could hear the shower running in the en suite master bath.

  There would’ve been a certain satisfaction to walking right in, driving home the point. But it wasn’t the smart tactical play. The point was well enough made by the fact that Daniel was in the man’s home. Billionaires are not accustomed to having their security breached.

  Daniel pulled back from the open door and continued to the end of the hallway, where he stepped into an elegantly furnished study. He closed the door before switching on the lights and placing the pistol on the desk blotter. He put the bag down beside the desk, tossed his hat and coat onto a nearby chair.

  A large globe stood in front of a wall of leather-bound books. Daniel lifted the Weste
rn Hemisphere and reached for one of the crystal decanters inside. He poured a few fingers of some absurdly expensive Scotch into a tulip snifter, put the snifter on the desk, next to the gun. He untied the shoes from his belt and laced them back on his feet. From his kit bag, he pulled a bottle of spring water. He sat at the desk, poured a tiny splash of water into the Scotch, then took a few deep slugs from the water bottle.

  Leaning back in the chair, feeling his body temperature normalize, sipping the whisky, long enough to be confident Carter Ames was out of the shower . . . Daniel lifted the telephone receiver, punched the Intercom button, and then Call All. As he spoke, his voice came out of every speaker in the house.

  “Hello, Carter, it’s Daniel Byrne. Finish dressing, and come see me at the end of the hall. I’m here to talk—if I’d come to kill you, you’d have died in the shower—so don’t press a Panic button and don’t bring a gun. I’ll know if you do. Just consider this a parley, to which I have rudely invited myself.”

  Daniel cradled the phone and settled in—he knew Ames would assert what control he could, would not rush. He sipped the Scotch and turned his attention to the large Rothko on the opposite wall.

  Two horizontal rectangles with indistinct edges dominated the canvas, the top rectangle—somewhere between orange and red, not quite rust but evoking rust in places—the same width but perhaps half the height of the one below. The larger rectangle was green, but where it was darker it was almost black. The space between the rectangles, and surrounding them to the edge of the canvas, was blue. It was an unhappy image, and it struck Daniel as a sky of fire and blood and rust above a darkening Earth. The smaller rectangle pressing down on the larger. Oppressing.

  When the doorknob finally turned, Daniel glanced at his watch: twelve minutes.

  Carter Ames entered, every gray hair in place, suit impeccable, right down to the perfect Windsor knot and pocket square.

  Ames said, “Bit melodramatic, don’t you think?” The transatlantic boarding-school accent was designed to give nothing away. “You could’ve simply called the office and booked an appointment. We’d have been only too happy to send a plane for you.”