The End Game

by Tod Goldberg

  “Good,” I said.

  “I haven’t been able to see her for a bit,” Virgil said. “I’ve been doing some business in Pensacola.”

  “Good,” I said. Fi and I were looking through binoculars now for any site of the Ottones’ ship. If Maria and Liz were going to be at Government Cut in time for Gennaro to stream by, that meant Bonaventura was likely to make his move immediately, too. All he needed to do was secure the ship.

  And that would be enough to get him arrested.

  But I needed to be there in case something, anything, went wrong. I’d promised Gennaro his wife and child would be safe and I wasn’t going to leave it solely in the hands of Christopher Bonaventura, or Alex Kyle, to make that happen. Plus, as soon as Alex Kyle saw us coming close, he was sure to redouble his efforts to stop the Ottones’ ship.

  “She said you two were going to start doing more bonding exercises,” Virgil said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Just want you to know I am in absolute support of that,” he said. “Man to man. It’s good to have positive relationships with your mama. Know what I mean?”

  “Virgil,” I said, “no offense? But this isn’t a conversation I really want to have with you right now.”

  “No problem, Mike,” he said. He put a big paw on my shoulder. “Whenever you want to talk.”

  He walked back to the front of the boat and I kept my eyes on the water, as did Fi.

  Everyone was silent for a time.

  “He’s just trying to be kind, Michael,” Fi said.

  “Not talking about this,” I said.

  “You know, that’s your prone position, Michael,” Fi said. “It’s like that fellow from Target. What was his name?”

  “Davey,” I said.

  “Right. Now there was a person just trying to connect with you and you were just rude to him.”

  “Fiona,” I said, “can’t this wait?”

  “All we’re doing is staring at the sea. We can talk and stare.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. Now she was mad. It’s never easy to work with people you used to sleep with. She was silent again for a time. Virgil was now spitting dip into a small cup, which I guess is how he relaxes in tense situations. “I’m just saying,” she continued, “that it would be nice if every now and then you admitted that it was your fault when lines of communication break down.”

  “Are we talking about us or about my mother and I or about me and Virgil?” I said.

  “All of it,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. I was scanning back and forth across the horizon, as was Fiona, which was good since that way we didn’t have to look at each other. “From now on, I’m an open book.”

  “I’d find that more convincing if…” she stopped. “Five o’clock. Do you see that?”

  Cutting through the water was a gold Chris-Craft Cobra speedboat. I trained my binoculars on it. I couldn’t make out faces, but I could tell there were five men on the boat and none of them had body types that screamed pleasure seekers.

  “Virgil,” I shouted, “that’s our target.”

  He put down his dip cup and came next to me. “Fast son of a bitch.”

  “It’s from this century and everything,” I said.

  The best boat to have in a situation like this would be a boat made for stealth tracking. Something like a Night Cat, a twenty-seven-foot boat with twin 300 horsepower engines that purr instead of roar, so that the person you’re tracking doesn’t get the impression that a Nimitz Class is on their ass. A Night Cat can turn at 41 degrees per second, which makes it about as responsive as the muscles that make you blink.

  But that would only be if you didn’t want to be seen. I needed Alex Kyle to see me. To know we were making our move on Maria and Liz.

  “Let’s rock and roll!” Virgil bellowed and gunned the engine, or as much as you can gun an engine on a fourteen-foot Pinecraft whose best days were probably pre-disco. A plume of blue smoke belched from the engine and a sound like an entire NASCAR race starting soon followed.

  The men on the Cobra turned their heads. It was that loud. And that was fine.

  “Don’t worry,” Virgil said. “Once she gets moving, she moves.”

  “Ship on the horizon,” Fi said. “Six o’clock. Practically the size of an island.”

  Through my binoculars I could see a boat of at least four hundred feet in length. It was black from the waterline, its steel hull looming with uncommon grace. Above the hull were five floors of living space (and likely, entertainment) space. The floors were a blinding white, which gave the entire ship the appearance of a tuxedo in the water.

  “You need to get that Cobra as close to that ship as possible; push it right into its line,” I said to Virgil.

  “That wasn’t part of the deal Sam put out,” Virgil said. “I thought we were just intercepting.”

  “We are,” I said. “And pushing.”

  “I’d like to avoid jail time for causing a death on the sea,” Virgil said.

  “Not going to happen,” I said. “All we want is for the men in that Cobra to stop the Ottones’ ship and board it. You get that Cobra into a position to make that happen.”

  Virgil smiled. “You’re a devious man, Mike.”

  I checked my watch. The time was now. We had calls and e-mails to send. I called Gennaro. I had five minutes before he’d launch. “I can see your wife’s boat,” I said.

  “Is she safe?”

  “She will be.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Race,” I said. “Just race. Win or lose. It’s on you alone now.”

  “And my wife is safe?”

  “Yes,” I said. Now I just had to make sure it happened. Gennaro put Sam on the phone. “Tell Darleen these coordinates,” I said and rattled off our location. A woman like Darleen was already waiting somewhere out in the water, so it would only be a matter of moments, I was certain, for this to all happen.

  “Got it, Mikey,” he said. “Be safe.”

  “What fun is that?” I said. “See you after you get back from Nassau.”

  I called Barry and told him to begin the flood. In minutes, a crime family with terrorist connections, that Nicholas Dinino was transferring large sums of cash to, which was probably placing large sums of money in illegal betting on the Pax Bellicosa losing, would be under investigation by every bank in the world.

  “Send the pictures,” I said to Fiona, which she did from her cell phone. In a few seconds, Nicholas Dinino wouldn’t just be in trouble with the mob and terrorists, he’d be in the process of getting cut out of the Ottone empire, probably before he ever saw land again.

  We’d caught Nicholas Dinino. Now it was about finishing the race.

  The difference between chasing someone and intercepting someone is all about angles. When you chase someone, you’re naturally in a passive position. You can only act when they act. You have no control over the flow of the chase.

  But when you’re intercepting someone, you dictate the angle of pursuit. Which is why instead of trying to catch Alex Kyle’s Cobra from behind, we were actively pushing it toward Ottones’ ship, cutting across the water at a 45-degree angle, so that we would T-bone the Cobra. The goal was to ensure not that they were forced to engage us, but that they were forced to make the Ottones’ ship stop, that they would board the ship to protect Maria and Liz, likely find Nicholas Dinino, and, if all happened in good timing, do so in front of the FBI.

  But first it had to happen.

  We sliced through the water, the front of the boat bouncing into the air as we crossed over whitecaps, the Cobra coming clearer into view, the Ottones’ ship looming larger in the distance.

  And then my cell phone rang.

  It wasn’t a number I recognized.

  “You’re getting very close to the edge,” a woman’s voice said when I answered.

  “Not much farther,” I said.

  “You have three minutes.” This time it was a man.


  I tossed the phone into the water.

  “Your mother?” Fi said.

  “No,” I said.

  She dug into a cabinet at her feet and pulled out a life vest. “Put your floaties on,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  The Cobra was now only about fifty yards from us, close enough that I could make out the faces of the men on board. It was easier when Alex Kyle turned and smiled at me. The Cobra banked left, then right, trying to shake us but Virgil’s little engine could and we kept up, drawing closer to their flank.

  The Ottones’ ship let out a bellow. We were both getting perilously close to it at this point.

  Virgil looked back at me, worry on his face. “Go,” I said. “We have to make this happen or everyone dies.”

  It was a fact I hadn’t quite considered, but that was seeming more and more true, now that I could make out a helipad on the bow of the Ottones’ yacht, a forest green chopper sitting at rest.

  I was certain it was Nicholas Dinino.

  If I didn’t get Alex Kyle and his men on that ship, there was no stopping Bonaventura from exacting vengeance, sometime, somewhere, for all of this. And if those men didn’t get on the ship, there was a good chance Dinino would kill Maria and Liz. Bonaventura most likely told Kyle to watch the boat, make sure I didn’t board it. Make sure I didn’t kill anyone.

  Alex Kyle knew the truth. He knew what I was capable of and what I was unlikely to do, but he was following orders. We had to make it look like we were heading for that boat to do what we had to do.

  Overhead, I heard the whooping of helicopters. The sky was alive with them now, television coverage beaming images around the world, but there’s a different sound between the nice choppers TV stations use and military transports.

  Alex Kyle looked up, too, and pointed. And then turned and pointed at me, like a warning.

  And maybe it was.

  Fi’s cell phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” I said.

  Virgil’s cell phone rang and he just tossed it overboard. “I got the message,” he said.

  The Ottones’ ship bellowed again. We had twenty yards between us and the Cobra, another three hundred before we were in the path of the cruise liner.

  “Turn,” I said very calmly to Virgil, “put us right in the path of the ship.”

  “We’ll have maybe fifteen seconds and that’s it,” he said. “This girl doesn’t do tricks.”

  “That’s all we need,” I said.

  Virgil spun our boat towards the Ottones’ ship.

  My assumption was that the ship’s captain would make the only correction he could-back towards the Cobra, which it did. The Cobra was a gymnast; it would be able to draw back and around the big ship without a problem.

  Well, some problems.

  “Get us out,” I yelled to Virgil and he cranked us back towards Miami, the boat lurching, the engine spitting out more blue smoke into the air.

  We could hear the engine on the Ottones’ ship sputtering. If the captain were smart-and if the Ottones’ employed him and he wasn’t in the tank to kill Maria and Liz, he was-he’d throw the engine into reverse and kill it, stopping the forward momentum as much as possible. Which is what it sounded like was happening as the engines of the big yacht ground audibly, the captain trying to get it to decelerate any way he could.

  The Cobra was fast enough to get out of the way and then circled back around the lumbering ship. I watched the Cobra pacing the cruise liner, which had slowed considerably. Through the binoculars I could see Alex on the radio and his men standing upright with shoulder-fired spearguns aimed above the hull of the ship. They were dressed to rappel, which meant they were planning to board shortly.

  “It’s too bad,” Fiona said.

  “What is?” I said.

  “That Alex Kyle fellow,” she said. “He seemed like the kind of person we might like in a different situation.”

  “Maybe he’ll come back and try to sell some plutonium,” I said. I was still watching when he gave the signal and his men fired their spears into the deck of the boat. They weren’t shooting to harm, but to set up rappelling lines. Within seconds, Kyle’s teams was scaling the side of the hull.

  “Nice form,” Virgil said.

  “We never get to do fun things like that,” Fi said.

  “I have a feeling this will be the last time these men get the chance,” I said. Just then a military helicopter swept down in front of the ship and hovered above the stern. Another came to the bow. There were three in the air now and I could make out a Coast Guard cutter screaming in from the east, another from the south. “I think they’ve just acted as pirates in the service of a Mafia boss.”

  Fi’s phone began to ring and she handed it to me.

  I looked at the caller ID. Restricted. Big surprise.

  “Hello?” I said, as chummy as possible.

  “Stay,” said the woman’s voice. “Enjoy the race.”

  “I think I will,” I said and then tossed the phone into the sea.

  Epilogue

  When you’re no longer a spy, it’s important to understand that the people you love sometimes need to know that you, belatedly, are willing to deal with some of life’s larger issues with them.

  Which is precisely what I was doing while sitting in the offices of Dr. Helen Miyazawa. My mother, Madeline, was sitting to one side of me, an unlit cigarette between her fingers. A stuffed Snoopy, portraying my father, was on the other side of me, and Dr. Miyazawa paced the room. Or at least I think she paced the room. It was hard to tell because all the lights in the office were off and the only illumination in the room came from a flashlight shot through a green marble on the doctor’s desk, which made everything look vaguely like a cave in Tora Bora at sunrise.

  It was a week after the race and if Sam’s friend Darleen was to be believed, I’d brought down Christopher Bonaventura and Alex Kyle, saved the Ottone family empire, helped capture the banking information and funds of an international terrorist network and likely imprisoned Nicholas Dinino for life.

  Or, as Sam told it, since he didn’t want to involve me too directly, he’d done all of that.

  I had to believe what Darleen told Sam because none of this appeared on the news or in the papers, or even on any blogs. Well, except for the photos of Nicholas Dinino and the young girl. She was a minor star now in Europe, probably would have a recording deal within a month and be forgotten in two. Gone. Disappeared.

  Just like Nicholas Dinino, a man I’d never actually met, but who probably wishes he never even heard my name on a recording.

  There’s a difference, however, between disappearing and being disappeared. You help the FBI with evidence against crime families, you tend to get special treatment, and though Darleen didn’t say so, I was inclined to believe that Nicholas Dinino was probably in a safe house in Phoenix, giving the FBI all the information he could to save his ass.

  And the Pax Bellicosa? It came in fifth. On its own, it still lost. And Sam spent twenty-four hours working harder than he had in twenty years. When he came back to America three days later, after some “Sam Time” with what he called “race groupies” he still had blisters on all of his fingers.

  All that had been accomplished, and yet I still had to bond with my mother, and it was somehow far more difficult. If things didn’t improve, I thought that it was only a matter of time before I woke up one morning to find Dr. Phil standing in my kitchen, eating my yogurt.

  “Tell me, Michael,” Dr. Miyazawa said from somewhere in her office I couldn’t quite pinpoint, “what would you say to your father right now if he were sitting beside you?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she said.

  “I’d ask him to shoot me.”

  “Michael!” my mother said.

  “No, no, this is good, Mrs. Westen,” Dr. Miyazawa said. “Go ahead, Michael. Why would you ask him to shoot you?”

  I had the vague sense she might
actually be beneath her desk. If I’d known this was all going to happen under the cloak of darkness, I would have brought night-vision goggles with me. The week prior, just days after the events of the Hurricane Cup, the three of us actually met out on the beach so the doctor could perform a clarifying ceremony, which involved my mother screaming into the ocean for ten minutes about all of the terrible things I’d ever done to her. Next week there was a field trip scheduled to an ashram in Boynton Beach, where we were to bond over the spiritual revelations.

  “Well,” I said, finally answering the question, “the muzzle flash would probably get you to turn on the lights, for one, which would give me an opportunity to look at your diploma a little closer, see where exactly you learned that trick with the marble.”

  “Many of my clients find the marble light very comforting,” she said. “You don’t find it comforting?”

  “No.”

  “What do you find comforting, Michael?”

  “Building explosives.”

  “Do you often think about dying, Michael? Do you feel obsessed with your own demise? Do you feel that your father has, in some way, killed you before, turned you into a shell of a person?”

  I checked my watch. We had about ten more minutes of this. “Yeah,” I said. “It was either him or my unborn twin.”

  “Michael,” my mother said, “you know that’s not true. You never had an unborn twin.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m also not a shell of a person, and I’m beginning to strongly doubt Dr. Miyazawa is an actual doctor, so we’re all on an even playing field now.”

  Dr. Miyazawa sighed. That was her go-to sound. I still couldn’t really see her. “We haven’t talked about this before, but you two might be perfect candidates for a birth reenactment.”

  “I understand why Medicare won’t pay for these appointments,” I said.

  “Do you ever get tired of using sarcasm as a defense?” Dr. Miyazawa asked.

  “Sarcasm is actually a very advanced brain function,” I said, which was the launching point for my mother to go into an exceptionally involved story about some perceived sarcasm-based injustice done upon her by me when I was six, which led Dr. Miyazawa to ask my mother about her feelings concerning any past lives I might have had and then, well, I just stopped listening completely. When people start arguing past lives, it’s only a matter of time until someone has tarot cards on the table.