The Camelot Gambit

by A. J. Scudiere

  "You're good," she said, or at least he saw it on her lips, the ringing in his ears having begun again.

  He watched as she flinched, and realized this time, she was hearing it too. But it was different this time. He saw her mouth the word “bullhorn” before he caught on.

  The bullhorn was sounding off in long, loud beeps. Someone else was still alive. Hopefully, Donovan thought, they all are. He and Eleri, he remembered, had emerged from the cover of the cornfields first. Though he knew the cornfields weren’t adequate cover in any way other than visually—certainly not against the blast that Marshawn had set off—he hoped the others had been further back and all had survived.

  "Wade?" Eleri asked, but he shook his head and shrugged, the motion hurting his shoulder blades, revealing a new way he had not known he'd been damaged.

  The ringing stopped for a moment, only to be replaced by three more sharp blasts on the bullhorn. There was no longer a need for silence, he knew. Marshawn James had either managed to flee in some way or would be found among the wreckage. It was most likely that only pieces of him would be found.

  It took fifteen minutes, but eventually, the lead agent managed to count heads and find everyone. Many agents were sitting on the ground, leaning over. Some had their heads tucked between their knees. Several had actually vomited. Those who were on their feet, the ones who'd been furthest away to start with, were ordered to search the wreckage.

  The lead wanted body parts. He wanted to know whether there was any chance Marshawn James could have escaped under cover of the blast he’d set off. With a sigh that hurt his ribs, Donovan sat, his arms looped over his knees, his weapon close enough at hand, and he listened as he heard the first shout.

  "I have a hand."

  "Sneaker, foot included." The second voice prompted another turning of his stomach.

  So they’d found a body. It will take more than just a visual check to confirm the ID as Marshawn James, he thought. But just then, Donovan heard the words, "Get back. Get back! Get back!"

  And he watched as all the agents turned and ran.

  64

  Eleri sat on the couch in the Frank Lloyd Wright house, wondering what could possibly be the right thing to do.

  She, Donovan, and Wade had been given five days each of medical leave—possibly longer, depending on how they checked out in the coming days. It had been hard at the scene to push the doctors away, not because it was personally difficult, but because medical attention had been necessary. And in the field, docs were pushy.

  Still, Eleri had done it. She’d refused anything beyond a standard field check in solidarity with Wade, Donovan, and several other agents who hadn't wanted medical treatment, despite the fact that they'd been tossed backwards by a blast … twice.

  Luckily, Donovan and Wade had both tested negative for concussion and so had she; the helmets had done their job. The two men had been adamant about not going to the hospital. Neither Donovan nor Wade liked being X-rayed for any reason, even if they had a need for medical interventions.

  The last time Donovan had his ankle checked out in a standard ER, the physician had wanted to write up Donovan’s unusual physiology in the medical journals. It had been a hard fight to say no. She’d watched as her partner pulled his badge to make it clear to the doctor that he would not have his medical records shared with anyone.

  Though she was confident that doctor had taken Donovan’s wariness to heart, if two such anomalies turned up in one hospital check, Eleri wasn't sure how easy it would be to suppress that information. So, the three of them simply refused any medical treatment further than having themselves checked for concussion. Then they refused it from a second set of EMTs. Then from the first set again.

  It was lucky the cabin was rather isolated, or the EMTs might have arrived in time to catch the second explosion Marshawn had rigged.

  As they'd watched their suspect inside the house on the thermal imager—during what they hadn't then known were the last minutes of his life—he'd not been making food. Marshawn had been cooking a bomb, and he even rigged another one to go off later. Though she had figured he’d made a timer and everything, they had since found out it was simply a second bomb, and a spark from the house crushing something as it collapsed had triggered it.

  It wasn't enough that he killed himself. Marshawn had to show the world how angry he was. He’d heard the bullhorn and waited until they arrived to trigger the first bomb. It had been big enough to rock the waiting cars and concuss some of the agents.

  But no one had died, Eleri thought, and people healed … She was still angry about the papers and computer parts that had been found among the wreckage. She'd seen the results of fires, explosions, and bombs. Eleri knew it was always impressive what burned to a complete crisp, and what survived intact.

  Fire and explosives had no rhyme or reason when it came to those things. She'd seen refrigerators explode out of burning buildings, and then found whole pieces of uncooked, untouched bologna in the middle of charred ruins. So she hadn't been surprised to find pieces of paper, somewhat singed, but still clean and legible and almost whole. She hadn’t been surprised to find crisp-edged corners of pages with penciled handwriting amongst the wreckage.

  They'd been her copies—the pages she and Donovan had transcribed from Jivika Das’s and Marat Rychenkov's notebooks. Original pieces of coded notes and one black-and-white cardboard cover also survived. Several pieces of black plastic and a single motherboard also appeared to be salvageable.

  It seemed he'd taken all of the notebooks, and the two FBI laptops with him to the cabin. He'd blown up all of Marat’s, Jivika’s, as well as their own work—or at least all of it that he’d gotten his hands on.

  What was left was the drive that Eleri and Donovan had taken from the false-bottom drawer in the garage of the Rychenkov-Schmitt home. The one with Marat's videos on it. They’d kept it separately. They also had the photos they’d taken of the notebook pages and sent to the FBI, the ones GJ Janson had used to eventually crack the code.

  She and Donovan had been back in the house—the case considered closed—for a day. Eleri had slept a good portion of it, though they'd had an alarm set for every three hours to wake up, check each other, and make sure that they were recovering from their head injuries okay.

  Wade had taken one of the office rooms rather than staying alone at his house in C’thulhu Heights.

  The Mazurs and the James girls had been brought back from the FBI safe house, though Eleri was unsure what was going on with them. She’d not had enough time to check in with them personally, only to hear from another agent that they’d all arrived safely. But LeDonRic and Maggie next door had not come to check on her and Donovan, either.

  It could be because they had their hands full with grieving children, new housing arrangements, and of course, the betrayal that the “nice neighbors” weren't “nice neighbors” at all, but FBI agents. Of the people Eleri had gotten to know in town, too many were now dead.

  Johanna and Jivika, who might have come and knocked on the Frank Lloyd Wright door to be sure that they were okay, were both already gone. Kaya and Maggie and LeDonRic might never speak to her again.

  She wanted to go to the Up N Atom and order the largest, sweetest type two coffee that she could get her hands on, but none of the three of them were yet cleared to drive, and she wasn't quite willing to call a ride service. The need for coffee had come on strong when the three of them had suffered through a call with Special Agent In Charge Westerfield that morning.

  “Well,” Westerfield had told them then, “at least we still have the photos that you snapped and sent to GJ.”

  Eleri had been glad that some of Marat's original notebook information had survived. It had been enough for GJ to crack the code, and maybe it would be enough to pass onto someone who could do something with it. Westerfield also informed them the FBI had decided to release the information, or at least what remained of it. “It should go to next of kin,” he said.


  Eleri had nodded at the phone, though they weren't on any kind of video call. So she blinked herself back into focus and said “Okay, we just have no idea who that would be.”

  “The analysts will figure it out, but you’ll need to debrief the players,” Westerfield made a slight turn in subject and ignored her comment about Jivika and Marat’s relatives. This time, it was Wade who said yes, as though they were all taking turns, just offering an affirmative to whatever Westerfield told them.

  Given the way her brain still felt unraveled, Eleri thought that might be a reasonable solution to the day. It would be another twenty-four hours before any of them was medically cleared enough to drive, which meant they would be stuck eating whatever food they could find in the fridge and pantry.

  The analysts had also been given the original applications that Marshall Bennett had set aside. They’d been looking through all of the unexplained ones. Marshawn James’ application was in that pile.

  “We actually have found fifteen other people who cheated their way in,” her boss said. His voice made her open her eyes wider.

  Damn, Eleri thought. Marshawn had actually cheated his way into Curie. Interesting. He was certainly bright enough, and she wondered which portion of the application he had failed, and what it was like to be rejected like that. Had Marshall Bennett created Curie’s problems with is exclusionary city policies?

  Eleri had seen it—the day trippers who came in, served the coffee, made the tacos, and swept the streets. They seemed to have no love for the strange residents of Curie, and the Curie residents seemed to make no real effort to interact with the outsiders, even though the city would fall apart without coffee, tacos, and clean streets.

  Marshall Bennett, she mused, had managed to bake his elitist ethics into an entire city.

  “Tomorrow,” Westerfield told them, “if you can clear medically, you'll need to hold a meeting both with LeDonRic James, and with the Mazur family.”

  Again, Eleri nodded to the phone before remembering she needed to speak the words. “Okay.”

  She was not looking forward to either meeting.

  65

  Donovan drove them across town toward the Mazur home, shifting subtly in his seat at each light, and noticing Eleri did the same. Everything hurt. Being tossed like a rag doll—twice—and then getting only your own medical care would do that to a body.

  He and Eleri had just left the house next door to their own. They’d left LeDonRic and Maggie sitting at the table, and no more words of comfort or charges brought against Marshawn could fix any of the things that were wrong. Knowing they would only make it worse, he and Eleri had answered the couple’s questions and then shut up.

  The two girls, Emersyn and Madisyn, were somewhere in the house, probably listening in, so Donovan and Eleri had watched their comments about the girls’ now-deceased fugitive father. Donovan also did it out of sensitivity for LeDonRic, who was, after all, the man's older brother. LeDonRic was clearly dealing with betrayal layered on top of feelings of failure.

  Donovan had not known how to deal with any of that. He could set broken bones, prescribe antibiotics, and turf patients to other wards in the hospital, but he hadn’t even been good with that. He’d been best in the morgue, where the patients didn’t care what he said, only that he solve their mysteries. So now he’d been extra careful about what he said of Marshawn.

  Still, Eleri had made a point before they went in—while they would not be rubbing in any of Marshawn’s various crimes, they still had to be clear his death was not on the FBI. He'd destroyed himself, both with the bombs he planted in the cabin, and with his actions earlier, killing Marat Rychenkov, Johanna Schmitt, Jivika Das. He had also attempted to murder Eleri herself.

  Even just speaking of it, even just skirting the issue, Donovan had been surprised to discover he was far more shaken than he'd originally believed. Though they'd had others come after them in the past, this was the first legitimate—and nearly completed—murder attempt on either of them. That it had not been him, that it had been Eleri, shook Donovan more than he'd been ready for. Eleri was strong, she was more powerful than even she knew, and she had managed to save herself. Still, Donovan couldn't help but note her diminutive size and be worried.

  This was why he hadn't had friends in the past. His high school girlfriend had been literally destroyed by his father. His heart, which he had thought had been hardened through the years even at seventeen, had been shredded. Now, here he was with actual friends, a girlfriend, a partner. Even the loss of GJ Janson, or Westerfield, would tear him apart if anything happened to them.

  He'd not been ready for this. He'd been slowly weaving himself a spider web of relationships, and as he'd woven them, he'd not considered the consequences. It didn’t matter; it was far too late now. He was caught in a web of his own making. His only solution was to keep them all safe. He was reminded now that he might not have the power to do that.

  Eleri shifted the topics at the table. “Our FBI analysts have struggled to find any next-of-kin for Johanna or Marat, or even for Jivika Das. Well, aside from her ex-husband, and we all agree he shouldn’t be privy to the intellectual properties she had fought so hard to keep during their divorce.”

  Ultimately, the couple joined in that conversation and it was decided that LeDonRic James and the Mazur family should become the new conservators of the estate of information Marat and Jivika had developed. LeDonRic had agreed to share it and Donovan could only hope that the families could work together better now with Marshawn out of the picture. Then they’d said their goodbyes and left.

  He and Eleri pulled up to the house where the Mazurs lived and knocked on the door. Luckily, the door opened right away. Donovan knew Eleri had called ahead and they were expected, but he hadn’t been sure what kind of reception they would get.

  He didn’t flip out his badge or paste on a fake smile as though the Mazurs were old friends who’d invited them to lunch. There was no reason to believe any further crimes were being committed, and the subterfuge was no longer necessary. In fact, he wasn't even sure who around town might already know that they were FBI agents. But as he was welcomed inside, he was surprised.

  "What's this?" he asked, pointing to various large boxes around the house. Nate's neat handwriting had labeled them with obvious titles of rooms.

  "We're moving," Kaya said, just as Donovan put all the pieces together. "I got an offer at another think tank several months ago, and I decided to take them up on it."

  He must have frowned.

  "I don't know," Kaya said, shrugging. "I think it’s just time to go. I love the idea of Curie. I love my friends at work. I love the Up N Atom and that the movie theater has obscure films. I love that my children are getting such a fantastic education. But I'm struggling with what else they're being educated in."

  That, Donovan understood. It reflected his own thoughts on the town. It seemed, he thought, there was no safe place. The town had a wonderfully diverse mix of people of various colors and backgrounds. Immigrants seemed welcome with open arms. Women were paid equally. Fathers stayed home with children as much as mothers did and appeared to be respected for it. It seemed like a utopia until you heard an argument between a highly intelligent person—trying to explain to someone how to cut their pizza into sixteenths so that each slice had one half of one kind of pizza and one half of another—and a server trying to explain that the restaurant didn’t offer such a ridiculous service.

  Donovan had listened to more than one argument as patrons became angrier and angrier at a server's inability to follow a complex instruction. He’d heard residents claim that the trash company should come on alternating Tuesdays following the Mars orbit. Donovan had even noted that the pizzas were always cut into precise fractions, and the trash was always picked up at the same time. The taco ingredients were weighed each time one was made. He understood the Mazurs need to leave.

  "We already have a house," Nate piped up. "I mean, we bought it online." He held up his
phone and Kaya laughed.

  "Seriously, same reason we bought this one,” Kaya added with a half-smile.

  It was Eleri who laughed and lightened the mood. "What's that?"

  "Two kids, twins. We need two bedrooms of the same size with comparable extras."

  Donovan must have frowned, because Kaya aimed her explanation at him. "This house in C’Thulhu Heights was one of only two in the whole town that had a master bedroom, and then two additional bedrooms of the exact same square footage."

  Nate grinned and shrugged. "One boy, one girl, same age. What are you going to do?"

  And at last, Donovan laughed along with them. Yes, he thought, he'd seen the blueprint of Johanna and Marat's home. He’d noticed the two offices of equal size and wondered if they’d had the same struggle the Mazurs did. They didn't have kids, but how did you decide who got the bigger office?

  "Can we chat?" Eleri asked.

  Surely it wasn't a surprise, as that was what they had come for.

  "Do you want the kids?" Kaya asked.

  Donovan and Eleri looked to each other for a quick moment before Eleri told them, "That's your decision."

  Kaya and Nate together, as one, called for Joule and Cage to come to the table.

  Donovan pulled Marat’s drive from his pocket. "The FBI analysts have copies, but this is video footage of Marat with his drones. Many of his and Jivika's notebooks did not survive, but I know he talked to you—Cage—about what he was doing."

  They looked to Joule, then to Nate and Kaya. "You all have some idea of what he was doing. The information had been shared with LeDonRic James, and at LeDonRic's request, also with Maggie Wells. It's now also yours … if you want it."

  Nate and Kaya looked at each other, concern on their faces, and Donovan understood. There had already been three murders committed over this information. The information was worth a goldmine … and possibly death.