The Devil's Game (The Game Trilogy Book 2)

by Sean Chercover

  “I’d give it a technological interpretation, because I don’t believe in God or Satan.”

  Daniel nodded. “The Pentagon weapon explains your experience in a way that supports your hard-core materialist world view—maybe that’s why you’re so committed to it. Because from where I’m standing, you sound more like a believer than a scientist, and your working hypothesis is at risk of hardening into dogma.”

  Kara looked at him for a long moment, evaluating. “For a man with a proposition, you’re distinctly lacking in tact. But you do have an interesting mind.” She sipped some wine. “Go on, I’m listening.”

  “Okay, so we’ve got the exact same phrase spoken into two different minds a continent apart. At a stretch, this could be explained by your Pentagon weapon, but some of the man’s other symptoms cannot.”

  “What symptoms?”

  “Mandal is a town in Norway, and the man has started speaking fluent Norwegian, a language he has never even been exposed to, complete with a real accent.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Kara, listen to yourself. How many times have people heard your story and said that’s not possible? I’m not asking you to believe in the supernatural. I honestly don’t know what’s causing the Trinity Phenomenon, but I do know it’s happening. And whatever its cause, it describes your experience perhaps better than secret government mind-control gamma ray guns.” He held up a hand. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound sarcastic . . . it just seems to me the rational thing to do is to test your working hypothesis against this competing one. And if you’re resisting that idea, then I think you need to honestly ask yourself which is more important: Preserving your working hypothesis, or finding the truth?”

  “Merde. You’re right.”

  “Excellent.” Daniel made a toasting gesture, sipped some wine. “This Mandal phrase is our only lead, so I propose we follow it to the actual town, see what we find in Norway. I bet you could use a change of scenery and I’m covering expenses, first-class travel.”

  “Wait . . . is this some kind of elaborate come-on?”

  Daniel smiled. “My come-ons are not so elaborate. Scout’s honor, separate bedrooms all the way. Guess I probably should’ve opened with that.”

  Kara sipped some wine. “Huh. I guess I’m both reassured and a wee bit disappointed all at once.” Her long neck flushed as she said it. She thought for a moment, nodded to herself. “I’ll come,” she said. “Definitely separate bedrooms, though.”

  20: FLYING NORTH

  Ready for pizza?” said Julia.

  Daniel switched the cell phone to his other ear as Heathrow’s public address system announced a flight to Amsterdam. He could see Kara through the glass wall of the Duty Free shop, selecting a bottle of booze. The PA system echoed through the airport again, announcing a flight to Frankfurt.

  “Pizza’s gonna have to wait a week or two,” said Daniel. “I have to leave town for a bit.”

  “You get a chance to visit Dr. Singh?”

  “I saw her. She’s interesting.”

  “I already know she’s interesting, that’s why I sent you to meet her. How crazy is she?”

  She’s a little unhinged, but she’s not crazy. He didn’t say it out loud.

  He said, “Too early to say. I’ll spend some more time with her but I’ve also got my own work to look after. Why don’t you chase down that Glasgow physicist you were telling me about, and I’ll call you when I’ve got a better handle on her condition?”

  “Thanks,” said Julia. “Any chance she’s experiencing the Trinity Phenomenon . . . or someone’s actually beaming voices into her head?”

  “I don’t know,” said Daniel, “but don’t get your hopes up. For now let’s just stick with interesting. Listen, I gotta skedaddle.”

  “Why does it feel like there’s something you’re not telling me?” said Julia.

  She did know him too well. And he had to admit, he wanted to tell her.

  During Daniel’s indoctrination, Raoul had said, A million ways you can mess up in the field that can be forgiven, but reading people in against orders is the one that’ll get you thrown out on your ass. We simply do not share our business—or even our existence—with outsiders. This is the life we choose.

  Daniel said, “Uh, I don’t know why it feels that way.”

  “Daniel, what’s up?”

  His training clicked in, planted firmly in his gray matter by hundreds of role-playing sessions with Dave Christleib.

  Startle and redirect . . . be rude.

  “Whatever, Julia.”

  “Whatever?”

  “You don’t want my help on this thing, I’ve got other things to do with my time.”

  “Why are you being so weird all of a sudden?”

  Double down on it . . .

  “I’m just saying I’m happy to help you with your research, but I have to work it around my schedule and I don’t have time to stop and share my every passing speculation about what might or might not be causing Dr. Singh’s auditory hallucinations. So just back off a little. Give me room to breathe, for God’s sake. When I have something, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay, fine . . . weirdo.” Julia hung up. A mild parting shot, her restraint belying her quite justifiable pique.

  As Daniel pocketed the phone, he caught his reflection in the glass wall. He needed Julia to lose interest in Kara, needed her to shift her attention to another chapter of her book for a while, long enough for him to make this trip. It was that simple. He didn’t love acting like an ass, but it got the job done.

  Ayo was right about there being a lot of Tim Trinity in him, but she was wrong about Daniel not seeing it. He’d been raised with grifters, raised by the very best of them. Among con artists, Tim was a first ballot hall of famer—and Daniel had learned the skills as a child, by osmosis.

  Valuable skills in a world of secrets and spies. But he’d just manipulated and lied to a woman he’d been in love with for a long time and still considered a loved friend.

  This is the life you chose.

  21: RADIO SILENCE

  Highway E18—south of Oslo, Norway

  A decade investigating miracle claims for the Vatican had taken Daniel to over half the countries on the planet, but he’d never been to Norway. Not surprising, really. Shaped by five centuries of Lutheranism, the culture here discouraged people from even feeling special—miraculous was completely unacceptable.

  Highway E18 was smooth enough to star in a skateboarder’s dreams, its crisp yellow lines flowing beneath a cloudless blue canopy, stretching through green pastures, gracefully curving around rocky granite hills, occasionally tunneling right through, sometimes spanning rivers on gleaming steel bridges of striking modern design and engineering.

  Daniel had no idea what he might find at the end of this journey, but he liked being here, on this road, at this moment . . . with this woman.

  He glanced over at Kara, now sleeping in the partially reclined passenger seat, sunlight landing softly on her face, the stress gone from her brow, her mouth turned up slightly at the corners in what struck Daniel as an intimate smile.

  Her expression in sleep had an openness that contrasted sharply with her nervous and guarded state when they’d first met. And why wouldn’t she be nervous and guarded, with all she’d been through? Six years. It was actually astonishing how well she’d held things together. Daniel doubted he’d have the same strength, were their roles reversed.

  And she still had the will to chase after the truth.

  It was a close call, though. Could’ve gone either way.

  As soon as Kara opened the door to her Knightsbridge flat that morning, Daniel had known the trip was in jeopardy.

  “You all right?”

  “I don’t know if I can go. I’m operating on one hour of sleep and about a gallon of coffee. My head is pou
nding.”

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t drink before bed last night. I wanted to look presentable for today.”

  Now he noticed she’d had her hair cut shorter, about an inch above the shoulders, and the silver at the roots was gone. An urge flickered, to tell her she was more than presentable, she was beautiful, and she was also beautiful with silver in her hair . . .

  Kara was saying, “. . . no voices came and I went to bed sober. About an hour later I had this horrible dream. It was in Norway, and I have no idea how I knew that, I just did, the way you know things in dreams sometimes. A rural village, not even a hamlet, really . . . it was a very long time ago, preindustrial, everything was filthy and everyone had bad teeth. The people in this place were all walking around the village, just wandering, not going anywhere, not doing anything, just smiling at each other with their bad teeth . . . and then all at once everyone was just—just falling down dead, all dying at the same time.” Her hand reached forward, then withdrew. “And I just stood there and watched them collapse like dropped marionettes. I didn’t even try to help them.”

  “Sounds awful.” She could’ve been dreaming about the Black Death. Or not. She hadn’t described the people as appearing sick before they dropped dead . . .

  “The worst part, it didn’t feel like a dream. It was more intense . . . like a vision. Like they were transmitting it into my head while I slept. They’ve never done that before, but my mouth tasted like cinnamon when I woke, the same sensation that accompanies the voices, so maybe they were.”

  The Foundation’s research said eighteen percent of confirmed AIT sufferers experienced these vision-dreams, but Daniel couldn’t tell her that.

  He said, “At one point, my uncle started having hyper-real dreams he called visions.” They’d started a couple weeks before Tim Trinity’s death, but Kara didn’t need to hear that. She also didn’t need to know that Daniel had been there when one of Tim’s vision-dreams came true. Not yet.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “One thing’s for sure: Staying here isn’t helping you. Either your tormenters are pointing you toward Norway, or the universe is. Let’s just take this trip and find out which. I’ll be right beside you the whole way.”

  Kara had slept through the two-hour flight and now the four-hour drive from Oslo to the southern tip of the country. She woke as they approached the outskirts of Mandal, pressed a button to raise her seat upright, brushed a few strands of hair out of her face.

  “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

  And it was. A picture postcard of a harbor town with a big trade in summer tourism. White wooden houses with red roofs dotted the lush green hillside, becoming more concentrated lower down, with larger buildings by the water. A marina full of pleasure crafts, another with beautifully maintained fishing boats. To one side of town, a wide, sandy beach almost a kilometer in length.

  They checked into a three-bedroom luxury waterfront rental cottage, unpacked in their separate bedrooms, then Daniel went back downstairs to the open kitchen and made a pot of coffee.

  Kara descended the floating staircase, wrapped in a pale-blue microfiber robe with navy trim. It looked . . . soft. “Thank you for the quiet drive,” she said.

  “You needed it. Coffee?”

  “I’ll freshen up first,” she said. “Feels like a new day.”

  “Sure. Take your time.” His phone vibrated on the counter, rattling against the car keys. He glanced at the screen, shrugged. “Office. ‘Vacation days’ is a bit of a misnomer in my racket.”

  “Business consulting,” said Kara. Nothing to read in her tone.

  Daniel nodded, reaching for the phone as it vibrated for the third time. “Just be a few minutes.”

  Kara smiled. “I’ll hop in the shower then.” She turned and walked up the stairs with a little more hip sway than he’d seen from her before.

  He caught the call before it hit voice-mail. “Yep?”

  Raoul Aharon said, “You never call, you never write . . . it’s enough to make a mother sick with worry.”

  Daniel stepped out onto the balcony and closed the door behind him. “Yeah, sorry for the radio silence, but I can’t exactly call you without blowing my cover, Mom.”

  “She’s buying your story?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “She’s a very smart woman with a scientist’s skeptical mind. So yeah, I think she’s buying my story. So far.” He leaned against the balcony railing. The five o’clock sun bathed the harbor in warm light, reflecting off the aluminum masts of sailboats. The same harbor had welcomed trade and sailors and rats and fleas and Yersinia pestis in 1349, leading to the death of a third of the country’s population within a single year. “Was gonna e-mail a sitrep tonight, but there ain’t much situation to report. Just conversation and travel.”

  “Right,” said Raoul. “Ayo thinks you’ve got a hard-on for Dr. Crazy.”

  “Ayo said that?”

  “’Course not—she said ‘smitten.’”

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” said Daniel.

  “Of course it’s my business. I’ve seen a dozen field operatives destroy themselves this way, some of them veterans.” Raoul chuckled. “Fair warning: I will kick your ass on the mats if you fall into this trap.”

  “Thanks for your concern,” said Daniel. “I’d feel a whole lot better if you and Ayo gave as much mindshare to this mission as you do to fantasizing about my sex life, or lack thereof.”

  “I’m just saying: you wanna get your dick wet, no skin off my nose. But smitten worries the hell out of me. Smitten overrides judgment.”

  “Fine. Busted. There’s chemistry.”

  “Oh, chemistry. So she wants to do you, too. Wonderful, have fun. But play her as an asset, period. She’s nuts—you can’t rely on her.”

  “The woman’s had voices in her head for six years, had her entire life stripped away, and the world thinks she’s insane. She’s coping a hell of a lot better than I would.” Daniel remembered Julia’s assessment. “She seems like a woman under great stress because someone is beaming voices into her head. She’s misidentified the source, but she’s thinking clearly. Someone—something, the universe, God, whatever—is beaming voices into her head. She’s not nuts. And the booze is just self-medicating to keep the voices quiet.”

  “Regardless, you are not cleared to read her in.”

  “Ayo already said that,” said Daniel. “And I didn’t.”

  “Yet,” said Raoul. “Soon as you consummate this bad idea, you’ll have a strong desire to share with her. Not because of the sex, per se. Because, smitten.”

  “I heard you the first three times,” said Daniel. “Moving on to actual business, tell me you’ve learned more about my buddy from Homeland.”

  “Evan Sage is as he appears, no allegiance to any parties beyond his employer. His team’s specialty is clandestine work, infiltrating Bad Guy networks, a lot of the heavy lifting abandoned by CIA after the silent coup that turned the Company into a de facto branch of the Pentagon. Sage is serious business, he could write his ticket anywhere in the intel community, but he’s got some kind of Captain America thing going on. Definitely got skills, but he’s not in the larger game, so I wouldn’t worry. After your meeting he ran a full background check on you, and last night—end of business in New York—he called UNEX Inc. and spoke at length with your boss, Dave Christleib. All as expected. Your NOC is intact.”

  “Hope so,” said Daniel. “He promised to keep an eye on me.”

  “And we’re keeping an eye on him keeping an eye on you, so don’t sweat it. Sage used his Amex to pay for lunch three hours ago at a pub two blocks from Thames House. If we had to, we could hack into London’s eye in the sky, but my guess is he took Mike Stotter to lunch. Probably asked if you were on Five’s
radar, which you were not previous to the question being asked. I promise, if either of these guys travels to Norway, you’ll know it before they land.”

  22: A MILLION VACATIONS

  Mandal seemed smaller than its population of fifteen thousand, and Daniel figured some of the tourists were actually new locals—wealthy retirees cramming a million Mandal vacations into their remaining years. Aside from looking both Indian and too young for retirement, Kara fit right in with the Norwegian sailing set, in capri pants, a Liberty print shirt, and a zippered cable-knit cardigan.

  As they strolled down a cobbled shopping street, Kara stopped to read the menu posted in a restaurant window. She turned away from the window and shook her head. “The benefits of travel are lost on anyone who eats pizza on a trip to Norway.”

  “There’s a Chinese joint a few blocks up that’s got good online reviews,” Daniel deadpanned.

  Kara made a face. “I’m holding out for local fishy delicacies.”

  They crossed a pedestrian bridge spanning a large salmon river that ran through the center of town—which explained the three fish on the coat of arms displayed all over town. On the other side of the bridge stood a large modern building with expansive glass walls and a gently arching white roof partly covered in green turf, providing a smooth aesthetic transition from the ultramodern building to the traditional hillside town behind it.

  Inside the building, they stopped at an art gallery featuring a local history exhibit—pen-and-ink renderings of important events through the centuries, a plaque beside each giving a thumbnail accounting of the event and any historically significant people involved.

  Daniel slowed as they hit the Black Death section. He’d been careful to make this seem like a casual stroll, but he’d read about the exhibit while researching the town online and he’d brought Kara here to see her reaction to this. He hadn’t told her about the soldier’s fixation with the sweep of the plague that had killed just about everyone living in Mandal. He didn’t want that information to influence her, either.