by James Frey
“Whoa.” Even Aisling is surprised by this. “Any prints on Alice?”
“None,” McCloskey says. “But judging by your descriptions, the big bludgeoned guy was our Nabataean friend, Maccabee Adlai.”
“Surveillance?”
“No. Whoever Alice was hunting had a camera kill switch for the entire building and every camera for a two-block radius. The apartment was wired something special,” McCloskey says.
Aisling suggests that the barefoot one could have been Baitsakhan. “Maybe the Nabataean and the Donghu are Playing together too? I mean if the Shang and the Mu could team up, why not them?”
“Maybe,” Jordan says.
“So that’s at least three dead, and maybe two teams. All Playing to win.” Aisling says this last thing slowly, pensively.
“As far as we know,” Jordan says.
“Why wouldn’t they be Playing to win, Aisling?” Pop asks, clearly not understanding where she’s going.
“Well, to be honest, Pop, I’m just wondering if maybe one or more of the Players is thinking what I’m thinking.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Pop asks. And then, with a twinge of fear in his voice, “It’s that cave painting you saw, isn’t it? The one you called me about. The one your father went to so long ago.”
Aisling nods. “It’s absolutely that cave painting. I understood it, Pop. I also think I understood what Dad wanted, even if he was crazy.”
Pop’s eyes narrow.
McCloskey holds up a hand. “Wait—what are you two talking about?”
Aisling turns to McCloskey. “Back at JFK you mentioned that you were going to try to stop this thing before you decided to team up with me, right?”
“That’s right,” McCloskey says.
“Ais, what are you saying?” Pop interjects.
“What I’m saying is that’s what I want too. To stop Endgame, Pop. Because I believe, somehow, some way, that it can be stopped.”
Pop slaps the table again. So hard that the whole room shakes. So hard that Aisling is immediately afraid that he broke his hand.
Pop doesn’t speak.
So Aisling speaks for him.
“I know, Pop,” Aisling says quietly. “I know you killed Dad—your own son—for thinking the same thing. It’s blasphemy.”
“Damn right it is,” Pop seethes.
“But this is what I want. No—this is what’s right. If we learn that there’s even a razor-thin chance at ending this thing, then we go for it. We could save billions of lives, Pop. Billions.”
Pop doesn’t speak for several moments. “So that’s it? You abandon your training? Your heritage? Your line?” He pauses. “Me?”
“No. I use all these things to help me, Pop. I use you especially. You especially . . .”
Pop edges his seat away from Aisling.
“I’m not saying we stop Playing,” Aisling explains. “We can’t. I can’t. I can’t because the only way I’m going to figure out how to stop this thing is by Playing. I don’t have the slightest fucking clue otherwise. So we hunt Players. We kill them if they’re bad and we join forces if they’re on the same page. We Play because we don’t have a choice. . . . But if we find a choice, then we make it. We try to stop Endgame, and we try to make sure these fucking keplers never come back here for any reason whatsoever.”
Pause.
Pause.
Pause.
“You sold me, Kopp,” Jordan says. McCloskey nods in agreement. And even though Aisling knows he still isn’t being all the way truthful, she can tell he means it.
“Good.”
“So who do we start with?” Jordan asks.
“An Liu,” Aisling says decisively. “He’s too unpredictable. And he’s definitely not trying to save the world.”
Jordan claps his hands and smiles. “We were hoping you’d pick old Liu.”
“Why?”
Jordan twirls a finger through the air. “Bring it up, McCloskey.” The image on the screen changes to a map of the world, a little red blip labeled 533 moving slowly northward along the curved Japanese island of Honshu. “For all the shit the Brits have eaten the past few days, they did manage to do one thing right. They chipped Liu. Stuck a tracker in his right thigh. And wouldn’t you know it? Marrs managed to hack it.”
“So we can go right to him?” Aisling asks.
“We most certainly can,” Jordan replies. “Better than that, we can reroute our kill team to meet us there.”
“Kill team, eh?” Pop asks.
“Kilo Foxtrot Echo,” McCloskey says.
Aisling shakes her head. “You guys with your jargon.”
Jordan shrugs it off. “Jargon may not kill people—but Kilo Foxtrot Echo does.”
What are you waiting for?x
HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT
Caesars Palace, Suite 2405, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Las Vegas is not what Hilal expects. He expects bustle, bouts of last-minute sin before the end, mayhem and debauchery.
Instead the place is silent.
There is barely anyone on the street or in the casinos. The only cars on the roads are police cruisers and taxis prowling for fares. The restaurants are empty, the clubs are empty, the bars are empty. The lobby at Caesars Palace only has 10 nonemployees in it. From the casino floor Hilal hears a croupier announce, “Red eighteen,” before sweeping the losing chips away. The lone gambler at the table doesn’t even glance up from his drink. He checks in to a suite on the 24th floor of the Augustus Tower, takes his bags to his room, lies on his huge bed. He falls asleep, and sleeps well into the following morning.
He wakes to the sound of a helicopter flying by. He slides the device from his pocket. It flickers to life. He swings it back and forth, going from one caduceus to the other, for several minutes.
Why two? Is one Ea and the other one of his surrogates? Has Ea somehow split himself and inhabited two bodies? Why two? Why two?
He doesn’t know.
He inspects the other things the device reveals: the vast cosmic scrim, the mysterious orange blob in the eastern Himalayas, and the long list of coordinates. He takes the time to carefully count them twice. There are 1,493. Virtually all are static numbers, never changing.
But nine do change.
One, he realizes as he walks across his large suite to the bathroom, marks him. The Aksumite. The coordinates are to the 1,000,000th decimal place, so even moving a few meters causes them to shift.
The other eight dynamic coordinates must be the remaining Players, he thinks. This is a tracker!
It is a revelation.
He relieves himself in the bathroom and hobbles back to the bedroom. He gets a pad and pen and his regular laptop from his pack and sits cross-legged on top of the bedspread and gets to work.
He checks all the coordinates in the smartphone. There are three pairs and two solo points, other than his own.
One pair moves quickly, north to south, over Central and South America. This pair must be flying.
Another pair is in a suburb north of Berlin, Germany, and is hardly moving at all.
And the last pair, also practically stationary, is—ding, ding, ding—in the eastern Himalayas, in remote Sikkim, India.
Hilal is convinced that the orange blob must therefore be marking one of the Players.
The one that holds Earth Key, he guesses incorrectly.
The two solitary points are in Port Jervis, New York, and Japan, the latter heading north, presumably by train based on the speed, toward Tokyo.
Hilal has no idea who is who, or why three teams would have formed after the Calling. His impressions of the Players were that only four, maybe five, would be open to alliances. And that number includes himself.
It is a mystery, he thinks.
This exercise takes him nearly five hours, and even after the long night’s sleep he is exhausted. He flops onto his side. He thinks about the possibilities—the Players, Ea, the strange coordinates, the two caducei—and drifts off to
sleep once more. . . .
He wakes with a start in the middle of the night. His eyes widen. He stares at the ceiling. He sits up. His head kills. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and plants his feet on the floor. He looks at the clock: 3:13 a.m. He takes the device—still two caducei, one stationary, the other moving somewhere on the streets below—and goes to the window. Vegas is lit up like a never-ending fireworks show. Multicolored neon, LCD screens as big as buildings with pictures of partiers and showgirls and food, lights of all colors flashing on and off in a choreographed dance. He looks to the Strip. It is still empty.
I need to stretch my legs. Get used to moving without the help of the canes, Hilal thinks, the lights twinkling on his face.
Out of habit, and some precaution, he slips his twin machetes, one labeled LOVE, the other HATE, beneath his baggy cotton pants. He heads downstairs and steps onto the sidewalk. Walking without the canes is painful but liberating. He can ignore pain.
He only passes policemen, bored and nervous and heavily armed, and a few vagrants and drifters. He turns off the Strip near the Bellagio, its fountains pluming for no one, and meanders southeast until he hits the intersection of East Harmon and Koval. More hotels and shopping areas are to the south, and a sprawling series of vacant, desertlike lots are to the north. He is only a few blocks from the illuminated pomp of the Strip, but here it is as desolate as any bankrupt inner city.
All a show, Hilal thinks of Las Vegas. All a facade. Even if it were teeming . . . Especially if it were teeming.
He stands there for several minutes, his eyes closed, the streets empty, the desert air crisp and clean. It reminds him of the air of the Danakil and Eastern Deserts, of his time in seclusion under the unending panoply of stars. And Las Vegas is so quiet, so eerily still, that with his eyes closed Hilal is transported to his home, among the scrub and stars and sand.
Alone.
Whole.
At home.
In peace.
But then his pocket gets warmer and warmer and suddenly hot.
Hilal opens his eyes. He thrusts his hand into his pocket and pulls out the device. It turns cold as soon as he touches it. He holds it up. He swings his arm this way and that, and there, when it is pointed south down Koval Lane, he sees a caduceus, bright and delineated and growing larger.
Hilal squints past the device. About a quarter mile away he sees a car. Its headlights are off, but he can tell as it flashes through the streetlamps that it is moving very, very fast.
Ea!
Hilal looks everywhere for a vehicle. There—in the vacant lot across East Harmon is a dilapidated white van. He slips the device into his pocket and breaks into a dead sprint. The pain in his body sings at full volume, but he does not care.
He is 75 meters away from the van. The car with the presumptive Ea is closing. Hilal is 50 meters away. He can hear the engine of Ea’s car. He is 25 meters away. Hilal glances over his shoulder. Ea’s vehicle is a late-model muscle car, a Shelby or a Mustang or a Challenger. Hilal moves faster. Is five meters away from the van as the car zips through the intersection. Hilal reaches the van. It is locked. He steps back and stabs at the window with his elbow and the glass spiderwebs and he hits it one more time and it shatters, raining on the concrete like diamonds. He opens the door and brushes glass off the seat and jumps in, stashing his machetes on the passenger side. He works quickly on the steering column and in 19 seconds has the engine running. He turns on the lights, peers at the gas gauge, and says a quiet blessing. It has half a tank.
He takes out the device and wedges it onto the dashboard just as Ea’s car disappears around a corner up Koval. Hilal puts the van into gear, and with a creak it lurches forward.
Hilal is inordinately excited. He is close. So close.
Hilal follows Ea, catching sight of the car now and then, moving east then north then east then north then east. The neighborhoods he passes through grow increasingly desolate and run-down, and now he is in an area littered with scrap yards, warehouses, Quonset huts like giant silver insects, sprawling lots overrun with the encroaching desert, and the husks of abandoned houses, trucks, cars. After 30 minutes, Ea turns right off Alto Avenue and heads south on Bledsoe.
Hilal slows. He flicks off the van’s lights and turns onto Bledsoe just as the car disappears around a cinder-block wall. The adjacent warehouse glows red with the car’s brake lights, then the glow is snuffed out. The car has stopped.
Hilal puts the van in neutral, kills the engine, and coasts to a standstill, the wall on his left, an open desert lot across the street on his right. He takes the device, so bright with the caduceus that Hilal is afraid it will give him away, and secures it in an inside pocket. He takes the machetes and attaches them to his belt. No need to conceal them anymore. He moves to the rear of the van and glimpses around the corner.
Clear.
He slinks along the wall, his hands resting on the hilts of his blades.
He is close.
So close.
When he reaches the corner, he drops to the ground, lies on his stomach, inches forward, peeks. A lithe man in dark clothing, a hood pulled over his head. He slings a knapsack onto his shoulder and closes his car’s trunk with a muted clap. He glances back to the street. Hilal doesn’t move. He is practically invisible with his head on the ground. Ea’s face is completely in shadow, save for the faint dot of his nose. He whips around and walks to the warehouse. Ea’s gait is confident, athletic, slightly feminine.
Hilal jumps to his feet and rounds the corner, making for the car. He is completely silent, no footfalls, no breath. He pauses by the trunk and looks under the car. Sees Ea’s feet disappear inside the building.
I must try to use the element of surprise.
He sprints to the warehouse, grabs a drainpipe, plants his feet on the wall, and shimmies up to the roof. In spite of all his injuries, Hilal’s body feels good, strong.
I am going to need to be strong.
He vaults the parapet wall at the top and silently draws a machete from his belt. The roof is flat and covered in light gravel. There are two triangular skylights and an extension with a door in it that undoubtedly opens onto a staircase. He sees no sign of cameras or microphones. The skylights emit a weak glow. Hilal creeps to the nearest one and, very slowly, looks inside.
He makes out a large room. Painted white. Modern furniture. A wall devoted to computers, a large kitchen with a stainless-steel countertop, a single door leading to another room, a small training area with kettlebells, a heavy bag, a speed bag. Mounted on the wall in this area are hand-to-hand weapons of all kinds: swords, sticks, knives, hammers, a collection of baseball bats.
No sign of Ea.
Hilal is about to move to the other skylight when the skin on his neck prickles. His instincts push him forward, his scarred face pressing into the glass of the skylight. An object whisks over him, grazing the back of his head.
Hilal rolls and swings the unsheathed machete behind him, aiming for his assailant’s ankles, but they aren’t there. He catches sight of Ea—it must be Ea, no other person in the world could sneak up on Hilal so easily—as he jumps over the machete’s razor-sharp edge. Hilal is ready to vault upward but instead must roll defensively as Ea’s weapon comes down for his face.
It is one of the baseball bats. Wooden, big barrel. In the dim light and with only a fraction of a second Hilal makes out the word Slugger on it, but he has no idea what that means.
Ea’s head is still hooded, and as Hilal scrambles sideways, he can’t make out any of his features. He feels a tug at his hip, as if his clothing is snagged on something, and manages to get his left hand under him just as the bat comes again for the side of his head. Hilal’s weight is distributed perfectly, his legs now tucked beneath him, and he springs a meter into the air. The bat misses. He extends his body and lands on his feet. He brings up the machete and reaches across his waist with his free hand to draw the other blade as well. He will cut this abomination to pieces.
/> But his hand comes up empty.
Ea straightens, standing three meters away. The bat is pointed at Hilal’s chest. Ea raises his other arm and a blade catches the meager light. Ea swiped the other machete. Hilal still can’t make out Ea’s hooded face, but if he could, he knows he would find a smile creasing his evil lips. Hilal readies himself. How he wishes he had the rods of Aaron and Moses with him now. How he curses himself for being so stupid to leave them behind, so unprepared as he moved into Las Vegas, Ea’s stomping ground.
Ea advances with lightning quickness, twirling the bat and machete together like a deadly fan. Hilal backpedals, using his single blade to deflect the blows. Ea’s hands and wrists are so fast and loose, faster than any person Hilal has fought or sparred against. The metal clanks, the wood thumps, Hilal dances, Ea dances. Hilal twirls and swipes his feet at Ea’s, but Ea dodges. Hilal ducks a blow and parries, but each time Ea steps back at the exact right moment. Hilal brings the blade up in a sweeping uppercut, but Ea knocks it to the side with the bat.
Just when Hilal thinks that Ea is too quick, too serpentine, too limber, Hilal scores a hit as they step past each other. It is a minor hit, the butt of his machete’s hilt striking the back of Ea’s knee, but it is enough to cause Ea to buckle and drop. Knowing this is his best chance, Hilal brings down his blade with everything he has for the top of Ea’s head, the hood swept off in the commotion, his long brown hair pulled into a topknot.
But instead of finding hair and skin and bone, Hilal’s blade strikes the bat on an oval logo on the barrel as Ea pulls it over his head. The machete embeds five centimeters into the pale hardwood.
Hilal is about to tug his weapon free when Ea stops him with a simple “Wouldn’t do that.”
