by James Frey
But he’s 19 years old, and no amount of training can get that out of his system.
Sarah seethes. “What do you mean, ‘a change of plan’?”
“We’re at an Olmec airstrip in Mexico. We needed more fuel.”
“To go to Nebraska.”
He shakes his head. “To go to Peru.”
Sarah’s face crumples. “What?”
“We need to show Earth Key to a wise woman in my line. She’ll know where we need to take it. She’ll help us find Sky Key.”
“Jago, I don’t want help finding Sky Key. I want to see my family! I need to see them!”
“Well, you’re not going to see them. Not yet. Abaddon is—”
Sarah lunges across the narrow cabin and falls to her knees in front of Jago and pounds his chest with both fists. He lets her do it. The blows aren’t meant to hurt, and they don’t.
“Sarah—”
“You don’t understand. If I don’t see them, I won’t make it!” she says.
“Sarah—”
“Something’s happened to me, Jago. I don’t know what. Something’s broken inside me.”
“I know, Sarah,” Jago says quietly, so that Renzo, if he’s eavesdropping at the door, won’t hear. “That’s exactly why you can’t go to your family now.”
She pounds his chest again, and he grabs her by the wrists, holds them in place. She’s strong, but he’s stronger. She collapses, her butt resting on her heels. Opens her hands and flattens them on his chest. He eases up on her wrists. Lets one of his hands fall on her head as it settles into his lap.
“I’m sorry, Sarah, but you’re in no state of mind to make decisions. I have to make them for you. If we could switch places, you’d see that I’m right.”
“But you said you wanted to help me. If that’s true then let me go to my family. They can help me.” Her voice is quiet. Plaintive.
“Maybe sí, maybe no.”
“They can. I know it.” But she doesn’t sound convinced.
“You want to know what I know, Sarah? That so long as you’re Playing, you’re all right. So long as you’re not thinking about Earth Key or Christopher or the Event, so long as you’re just reacting to what’s coming at you, then you’re fine. So that’s where I’m taking you. To the game. To Endgame. To Play. You may be ready to give up, but I’m not ready to give up on you. That—that is how I am going to help you.”
“I want to go home.” A whisper.
“I want things too, but I can’t always have them.” He caresses her hair. Twirls a strand around his finger. She nuzzles her cheek into his thigh. Right now, more than anything, he wants to hold her, kiss her, tear her clothing off.
Right now he wishes Endgame weren’t real.
But it is.
“The other Players aren’t taking detours to deal with the way they feel about what’s happening. . . . They’re Playing. For all we know, the seven most deadly people in the world—not counting you or me—are using every tool at their disposal to find us, to find Earth Key. For all we know, they are fifty miles away and closing fast. For all we know, one’s aiming a sniper rifle at this very airplane, or an RPG, or a telescopic mic and is listening to us talk, right now. We can’t let them do this. We can’t let them catch us! We can’t let them take it, or kill either one of us. We have to stay together, protect each other, hold Earth Key, and find Sky Key. That is what we need to do. They are Playing. We have to Play too.”
She lets one of her hands rest on his knee.
“I could go,” she says. “On my own.”
His heart flutters at the possibility, but he knows it won’t happen.
He knows because: “I have Earth Key.”
She pulls away. “What do you mean you have Earth Key?”
“Don’t worry. It’s safe.”
Sarah looks left and right. “Where is it? Where?” She digs her nails into his thigh.
“It’s on the plane.” He suddenly wonders if he should tell her where he put it. “That’s why we’re going to Peru. There’s an Olmec elder who should be able to help us. Us, Sarah, do you hear me?”
She doesn’t. “I need it, Jago. You’re right about one thing—I can’t lose it. I can’t be responsible for triggering the Event and then lose the thing that might offer me some way to redemption. Some way . . . some way . . . some way . . .” She trails off, her eyes darting around the cabin in fear.
Jago’s heart pounds. She has been poisoned. Did Earth Key do this to her? Is there some defect in her line? Or was she always so fragile right under the surface?
No.
He doesn’t think so.
Her nails dig and dig and dig. He takes her head in both hands and lifts her gaze to his. Pushes forward in his seat.
He still sees it there.
The strength.
“It’s okay, Sarah. It’s okay.”
Renzo starts the plane’s engines. His voice comes over the PA. “Leaving in five, Jago.”
Jago clicks the all-clear button on the bulkhead.
“I need to see my family,” Sarah says again.
“No, you don’t.”
“I need to.”
“You can’t. I won’t let you.”
“So I’m your captive, is that it?”
The plane lurches backward, begins to move into the bright Mexican day.
“Yes,” he says. “I won’t let you go. I can’t.”
The engines cycle up.
“Prepare for takeoff,” Renzo announces.
“We’ll win together?” she says.
“Yes. I swear it.” She lifts her head. He pulls her face to his. They kiss, and kiss, and kiss. “I swear it,” he repeats, and then they don’t say anything else.
ix
AISLING KOPP, GREG JORDAN, BRIDGET MCCLOSKEY, POP KOPP
CIA Safe House, Port Jervis, New York, United States
As soon as Aisling saw Pop, she gave him a long warm hug, rocking back and forth. He kissed both her cheeks. They hugged again. She whispered quietly in his ear in their ancient Celtic tongue, “Did they hurt you?”
“No.”
“Do you trust them?”
“A little.”
“Do you think they can help us?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s see where this goes.”
“Agreed.”
They said it so discreetly and quickly and without even moving their lips that none of the CIA officers noticed.
The following morning Aisling and Pop sit thigh to thigh at the head of a table in a situation room, ready to hear some presentation Jordan’s put together. He stands next to Aisling with a clicker. McCloskey sits on the long side of the table at a laptop. Marrs is somewhere else.
“Probably having a powwow with Token D. Doobie,” McCloskey says.
Jordan huffs. “Especially after the president’s announcement.”
Aisling ignores the cutesy pot joke. “But I thought you jarheads knew about the giant meteor already.”
Jordan hits the clicker. A screen at the far end of the room lights up. “Yeah, but hearing it pass the commander in chief’s hallowed lips is another level of wake the heck up, you know?”
“And we’re not jarheads,” McCloskey corrects. “We’re spooks.”
“Enough banter,” Jordan says. “Load up the personnel doc, McCloskey.”
Aisling watches McCloskey’s body language as she runs her fingers over the laptop. She looks confident and businesslike. No-nonsense. Nothing about her conveys duplicity or intrigue. The same goes for Jordan. They’re just two professionals doing something they’ve done hundreds of times: getting ready to talk about bad guys and what to do about them.
And yet Aisling knows that while body language is a good indicator of intentions, it’s not bulletproof. She knows these two haven’t told her everything.
There’s more to these people. But what?
As Aisling ponders this, a low-end graphic appears on the screen. It’s a black card with a red targ
et in the background. The title reads ENDGAME PLAYERS.
“You guys make that yourself?” Aisling asks with mock admiration.
“We’re not graphic designers, Kopp,” Jordan answers wryly. He hits the clicker again, and the graphic changes to two rows of rectangles, six on top, seven on bottom.
Aisling sees herself, from a passport photo. And An Liu, who looks asleep or dead. And Chiyoko Takeda, who to Aisling’s surprise is categorically dead. And a grainy picture of Jago Tlaloc on a street corner. And another, much clearer picture of Sarah Alopay in an airport. And a clear snapshot of Maccabee Adlai. And a passport photo of an American-looking kid with blond hair, blue eyes, and light stubble. The other six rectangles are blank and have question marks on them.
“Who’s the hunky one?” Aisling asks. “He’s not a Player.”
“Christopher Vanderkamp of Omaha, Nebraska. Dad’s a beef tycoon. He was Sarah Alopay’s boyfriend before the meteors.”
“Was?”
“Deader’n disco now,” McCloskey says. “Blown to bits from the waist up at Stonehenge. We have no idea why he was there, but he was.”
“The theory is he puppy-dogged Alopay after she left Omaha,” Jordan explains. “He was an all-American quarterback, headed to Nebraska to start. Fast and strong, good student too. He probably thought he could help her.”
“Who else was at Stonehenge?” Aisling asks.
“Tlaloc and Alopay, Takeda and Liu.”
Aisling knows that Sarah and Jago made some kind of alliance, but she doesn’t understand why Jordan paired the other two. “The Mu and the Shang were also together?”
“Absolutely,” Jordan answers.
Aisling shakes her head. “I don’t see it. Chiyoko was a mute, and An was a paranoid sociopath with a gnarly tic. Neither struck me as the type that was looking for love—or even friendship.”
“Well, they were definitely together. The Brits got intelligence that proves it.”
“What happened to Takeda?” Pop asks.
“Crushed to death by one of the rocks at Stonehenge,” Jordan answers.
“And Liu?” Aisling asks.
“Took a gunshot to the head more or less point-blank. But because of a metal plate he had hiding in there, An Liu is unfortunately very much alive,” McCloskey says.
“And you’re not kidding about An being bad,” Jordan adds. “By which I mean very good at competing in Endgame. British Special Forces had him on lockdown on a Royal Navy destroyer in the English Channel, and in spite of being drugged and strapped to a gurney, he escaped single-handedly. Made off with a stealth helicopter, blew up the ship’s bridge, and took what was left of Chiyoko Takeda. Killed twenty-seven, injured fifteen, four seriously. The helicopter ditched and sank in the Atlantic when it ran out of fuel. A remote submersible ID’d Takeda’s remains, but no sign of Liu.”
“Impressive,” Aisling says. “Shame he didn’t die.”
“You know of any other Players who did?” Jordan asks.
“Only the Minoan, Marcus Loxias Megalos of the 5th line,” Aisling says. “Cocky kid. An killed him at the Calling.”
“Good to know,” Jordan says. McCloskey types the information into the computer.
“And the Cahokian and the Olmec?” Aisling asks. “Are they alive?” Aisling can’t help but think about Italy, when she had a chance to waste them and didn’t. And she can’t help but wonder: if she had wasted them, then maybe Earth Key would never have been found, and the next phase would never have even begun.
“They’re alive,” Jordan says. “They neutralized a predawn SAS takedown team that ambushed them in their hotel room. The team had sniper and unarmed drone support, but that didn’t stop the Players from killing two and injuring everyone else. They escaped, evading the backup team in metro London, possibly the most heavily surveilled city in the world.”
“Man, the Brits aren’t coming out too good in this one, are they?” Aisling asks.
“Not so far.”
“I doubt the Israelis or the Germans or the Chinese—or even you and your associates, Mr. Jordan—could have done much better,” Pop says. “They are Players.”
“Possibly,” Jordan says coyly.
Pop ignores him.
Aisling isn’t interested in a pissing contest about the efficacy of the world’s clandestine services. She says, “I assume Alopay and Tlaloc have Earth Key?”
“We assume the same,” Jordan says. “But we’re not a hundred percent on what that even means. I’ve known about Endgame for a long time but—”
“You mean you’ve been obsessed with Endgame for a long time,” McCloskey interjects.
“Haven’t we all, McCloskey?”
McCloskey shrugs. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Aisling says, “I’ll explain the Earth Key thing to you later, but I’ve been dying to know—exactly how is it that you learned all this? What I mean is, who’s your source?”
Pop nudges her under the table. “I’ve been wondering the same,” he says.
“I already told you,” McCloskey says. “We got some early and, frankly, very confusing info from your dad, and after that it’s been the Nabataeans.”
Aisling shakes her head. “No offense, but I don’t buy it. Your Nabataean friends wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, you’re La Tène Celt. Go find Declan Kopp’s daughter and team up with her. That’s the only way you have a chance at surviving what’s coming.’ No way. If they thought you were useful—and they must have, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered talking to you at all—they would have exploited you. Used you. Tried to recruit you.”
McCloskey shifts in her chair. Jordan is stock-still.
There it is, Aisling thinks. Dig deeper. Now.
“So who’s your source?”
“The Nabataeans did try to recruit us, Kopp,” Jordan says. “Made a hell of a pitch too. All the same, I said no thanks.”
“Don’t change the subject, Jordan. Who is it?” Aisling demands.
Jordan pauses. Looks at McCloskey. She nods. He sighs. “You ever hear of the Brotherhood of the Snake?”
Aisling frowns. “Stupid name.”
“But have you heard of them?”
“No. Should I?”
“Probably,” McCloskey says, her voice a little lower than normal. “You being a Player and all.”
“Fuck you, McCloskey.”
Jordan holds up a hand. “Easy, guys. No need for that. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t heard of them. What matters is that they they know a lot about Endgame.”
“But who are they?” Pop asks.
“Truth is we’ve never met a single one,” McCloskey says. “They’re shadowy as hell. All of our correspondence was hush-hush and superencrypted. Sometimes they just communicated with us by using puzzle challenges that were really hard to crack. Other times they sent us videos that barely made any sense but that had hidden messages. They’re obsessed with combating the, quote, Corruption of Man, unquote, by pledging themselves to some quasi-religion called the Ancient Truth.”
“They sound like a bunch of Class-A nutsos,” Aisling says. “I realize that as a Player that’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black, but still. Nutsos.”
“We thought the same thing when they contacted us,” Jordan says. “We’d been doing antiterrorism work in the Middle East for years, and when we started hearing about Endgame, we thought it was some kind of massive 9/11 follow-up. When we found out it was something else entirely, we were confused. The Brotherhood tracked us down on their own and helped clear some of that confusion.”
McCloskey snickers. “And then this little death match got kicked off and—”
Pop slaps the table hard, and everyone shuts up. “This is not a ‘little death match,’ miss. Crazy or not, it’s real. It’s the Great Puzzle, and the Players are tasked with solving it. If one doesn’t, everyone will die. And if Aisling doesn’t solve it, everyone in this room will die. Guaranteed. So let’s stop talking about Aisling’s crazy dead father and peop
le who we know are not Players and get back to business. Let’s Play Endgame, now, in the present, not talk about bullshit organizations that think they know one fucking thing about the past when they don’t.”
Aisling almost says something to contradict Pop. She liked hearing about Jordan’s sources, and is curious about this Brotherhood, but then Pop gives her a nudge and she understands. It’s a lesson that these CIA officers surely know: Press too hard too fast and you get crappy information. Play it out, with one person wanting more and another wanting less, and you get better information.
There’s an awkward silence as the air clears. “Fair enough, Mr. Kopp,” Jordan finally says.
“Call me Pop. Everyone does.”
Jordan nods. “Let’s get back to the presentation.”
“Agreed,” Aisling says.
Jordan asks for names and descriptions of the other Players. Aisling gives them. She IDs Kala, who’s pictured, and then she tells them about Shari and Hilal and Baitsakhan and Maccabee and Alice, who are not pictured. Aisling gives detailed physical descriptions. She assumes each is alive. She talks about Alice last.
“She’s big, very dark-skinned, wild hair, and has a pale curved birthmark above her right eye.”
McCloskey takes notes and scans the internet as Aisling talks, and within seconds of hearing about Alice she says, “This her?” A picture of Alice Ulapala’s bloodied head pops up on the big screen.
“Yup,” Aisling says coolly.
“We knew one of you was aboriginal, so we’ve been casting a wide net for anything involving border crossings or law enforcement vis-à-vis Australian aborigines. We got this hit from the Berlin PD late last night.”
Aisling slowly shakes her head. “I didn’t think she’d go so soon. Only met her at the Calling, but she seemed like one of the decent ones. Strong too.”
“She didn’t go easy,” Jordan says. “The crime scene was a bloodbath. A dead woman on a bed, her spinal cord severed between the C-three and C-four vertebra. And there was the blood of a third individual all over the floor. Alice’s hands were covered in it, and were bruised and swollen, and one was slightly fractured at the third metacarpal. She pummeled the hell out of this guy—and a pretty big guy, judging by the smear marks on the floor—before a fourth, probably male individual with small bare feet snuck up behind her and, somehow, squeezed her neck with his hand so hard that her head popped off. These two appear to have left the scene as quickly as they could.”
