The Zero Game

by Brad Meltzer

  “Actually, me, too,” Dinah said dryly, thumbing through her own notebook but never taking her eyes off her Senate counterpart.

  Trish sat up straight and stared back at Dinah. For almost twenty seconds, the two women sat there, on opposite sides of the conference table, without saying a word. Next to them, Ezra and Georgia watched them like the spectators they usually were. Samurai standoff, Matthew used to call it. Happened every time they tried to close the bill. The final grab at the goody bag.

  Dinah tapped the point of her pencil against the table, readying her sword. Even with Matthew gone, the battle had to go on. That is, until someone gave up.

  “My mistake . . .” Trish finally offered. “I was reading it wrong . . . That project can wait till next year.”

  Ezra smiled. Dinah barely grinned. She was never one to gloat. Especially with the Senate. As she well knew, if you gloated with the Senate, they’d always bite you back.

  “Glad to hear it,” Dinah replied, zipping her fanny pack and standing up from the table.

  Enjoying the victory, Ezra hummed Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah under his breath. Matthew used to do the same thing when his office mate would come in and throw around her weight. Someone’s in the kitchen I knoooow . . .

  “So that’s it?” Georgia asked. “We’re finally finished?”

  “Actually, Matthew said you should’ve been finished a week ago,” Dinah clarified. “Now we’re in a mad scramble with a vote at the end of the week.”

  “The bill’s on the Floor at the end of the week?” Trish asked. “Since when?”

  “Since this morning, when Leadership made the announcement without asking anyone.” All three of her colleagues shook their heads, but it really wasn’t much of a surprise. During election years, the biggest race in Congress was always the one to get home. That’s how campaigns were won. That and the individual projects Members brought home for their districts: a water project in Florida, a new sewer system in Massachusetts . . . and even that tiny gold mine in South Dakota, Dinah thought.

  “You really think we can finish Conference in a week?” Trish called out.

  “I don’t see why not,” Dinah replied, lugging the rest of the paperwork to the door that connected to her office. “All you have to do now is sell it to your boss.”

  Trish nodded, watching Dinah leave. “By the way,” she called out, “thanks for taking over for Matthew. I know it’s been hard with everything that’s—”

  “It had to get done,” Dinah interrupted. “It’s as simple as that.”

  With a slam, the door shut behind her, and Dinah crossed back into her office. She was never one for the falsities of small talk, but more important, if she’d waited any longer, she might’ve missed the person who, as she looked across the room, was waiting so patiently for her.

  “All set?” Barry asked, leaning against the short filing cabinet between Matthew’s and Dinah’s desks.

  “All set,” Dinah replied. “Now where do you want to go to celebrate?”

  35

  YEAH . . . ABSOLUTELY . . . WE’RE from Wendell,” I say, nodding to the big guy in overalls standing outside our car window. “How’d you know?”

  He motions to my button-down shirt. Under his overalls, he’s sporting a Spring Break ’94 T-shirt with neon orange letters. Doesn’t take a genius to know who’s the outsider.

  “Shelley, right?” I ask, reading the name that’s written in black magic marker across the front of his banged-up construction helmet. “Janos told me to say hi.”

  “Who’s Janos?” he asks, confused.

  That tells me the first part. Whatever’s going on down there, these guys are just hired hands. “Sorry . . .” I say. “He’s another Wendell guy. I thought you two might’ve—”

  “Shelley, you there?” a voice squawks through the two-way radio on his belt.

  “’Scuse me,” he says, grabbing the radio. “Mileaway?” he asks.

  “Where you at?” the voice shoots back.

  “They got me up top the whole day,” Shelley says.

  “Surface rat.”

  “Mole.”

  “Better than deep-level trash,” the voice shoots back.

  “Amen to that,” Shelley says, shooting me a grin and inviting me in on the joke. I nod as if it’s the best mining barb I’ve heard all week, then quickly point to one of the few open parking spaces. “Listen, should we . . . ?”

  “Uh—ya . . . right there’s perfect,” Shelley says as the guy on his two-way continues talking. “There’s gear in the dry,” Shelley adds, motioning to the large brick building just behind the metal teepee. “And here . . .” He pulls a key ring of round metal tags from his pocket and undoes the latch, dropping four of the tags in my hand. Two are imprinted with the number 27; the other two have the number 15. “Don’t forget to tag in,” he explains. “One in your pocket, one on the wall.”

  With a quick thanks, we’re headed for our parking spot, and he’s back on his radio.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Viv asks. She’s sitting up slightly taller in the seat than yesterday, but there’s no mistaking the way she stares anxiously in her rearview mirror. When I was listening to Viv’s conversation with her mother, I said that strength had to be found from within. The way Viv continues to eye the rearview, she’s still searching for it.

  “Viv, this place doesn’t have a single drop of gold in it, but they’re setting up shop like that scene from E.T. when the government shows up.”

  “But if we . . .”

  “Listen, I’m not saying I want to go down in the mine, but you have any better ideas for figuring out what’s going on around here?”

  She looks down at her lap, which is covered with the brochures from the motel. On the front page, it reads, From the Bible to Plato’s Republic, the underground has been associated with Knowledge.

  That’s what we’re counting on.

  “All my friends’ dads used to mine,” I add. “Believe me, even if we do go in, it’s like a cave—we’re talking a few hundred feet down, max . . .”

  “Try eight thousand,” she blurts.

  “What?”

  She freezes, surprised by the sudden attention. “Th-That’s what it says. In here . . .” she adds, passing me the brochure. “Before it was closed down, this place was the oldest operating mine in all of North America. It beat every gold, coal, silver, and other mine in the country.”

  I snatch the brochure from her hands. Since 1876, it says on the cover.

  “They’ve been shoveling for over a hundred and twenty-five years. That’ll get you pretty deep,” she continues. “Those miners who were trapped in Pennsylvania a few years back—what were they at, two hundred feet?”

  “Two hundred and forty,” I say.

  “Well, this is eight thousand. Can you imagine? Eight thousand. That’s six Empire State Buildings straight into the ground . . .”

  I flip the brochure to the back and confirm the facts: Six Empire State Buildings . . . fifty-seven levels . . . two and a half miles wide . . . and three hundred and fifty miles of underground passageways. At the very bottom, the temperature gets to 133 degrees. I glance out the window at the road beneath us. Forget the beehive. We’re standing on an entire ant farm.

  “Maybe I should stay up here,” Viv says. “Y’know . . . sorta just to keep lookout . . .”

  Before I can respond, she glances back to her rearview. Behind us, a silver Ford pickup pulls across the gravel, into the parking lot. Viv anxiously eyes the driver, checking to see if he looks familiar. I know what she’s thinking. Even if Janos is just touching down right now, he can’t be far behind. That’s the choice: the demon aboveground versus the demon below.

  “You really think it’s safer to be up here by yourself?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer. She’s still watching the silver pickup.

  “Please just promise me we’ll be fast,” she begs.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, swinging m
y door open and hopping outside. “We’ll be in and out before anyone even knows it.”

  36

  LIGHTLY TAPPING THE side of his thumb against the top of the Hertz rental car counter in the Rapid City airport, Janos made no attempt to hide his frustration with the South Dakota way of life. “What’s taking so long?” he asked the young employee with the skinny Mount Rushmore tie.

  “Sorry . . . just been one of those busy mornings,” the man behind the counter replied, shuffling through a short pile of paperwork.

  Janos looked around the main lounge of the airport. There were a total of six people, including a Native American janitor.

  “Okay—and when will you be returning the car?” the man behind the counter asked.

  “Hopefully, tonight,” Janos shot back.

  “Just a quick visit, eh?”

  Janos didn’t answer. His eyes stared at the key chain in the man’s hand. “Can I just have my key?”

  “And will you be needing any insurance on the—”

  Janos’s hand shot out like a dart, gripping the man’s wrist and swiping the key from his hand.

  “We done?” Janos growled.

  “I-It’s a blue Ford Explorer . . . in spot fifteen,” the man said as Janos ripped a map from the pad on the counter and stormed toward the exit. “You have a good day, now, Mr . . .” The man looked down at the photocopy of the New Jersey driver’s license Janos had given him. Robert Franklin. “You have a good day, now, Mr. Franklin. And welcome to South Dakota!”

  37

  WALKING AS FAST AS I can with my briefing book in hand, I keep up my Senator stride as we head for the red brick building. The book is actually the owner’s manual from the glove compartment of the Suburban, but at the pace we’re moving, no one’ll ever get a good look. On my right, Viv completes the picture, trailing behind me like the faithful aide to my Wendell executive. Between her height and her newly pressed navy suit, she looks old enough to play the part. I tell her not to smile, just to be safe. The only way to belong is to act like you belong. But the closer we get to the brick building, the more we realize there’s almost no one around to call us out and scream bullshit. Unlike the trailers behind us, the pathways over here are all empty.

  “You think they’re underground?” Viv asks, noticing the sudden decrease in population.

  “Hard to say; I counted sixteen cars in the parking lot—plus all that machinery. Maybe all the work’s being done back by the trailers.”

  “Or maybe whatever’s up here is something they don’t want tons of people to see.”

  I pick up my pace; Viv matches my speed. As we turn the corner of the brick building, there’s a door in front and a metal grated staircase that heads down and into an entrance on the side of the building. Viv looks my way. I agree. Sticking to the back roads, we both go for the stairs. As we step down, little bits of rock slide from our shoes through the grating and down to a concrete alley twenty feet below. It’s not even close to the drop we’re about to take. I look over my shoulder. Staring through the steps, Viv starts slowing down.

  “Viv . . .”

  “I’m fine,” she calls out, even though I never asked the question.

  Inside the red brick building, we cross through a dark tiled hallway and enter a kitchenette that feels like it’s been picked over and left for dead. The vinyl floor is cracked, the refrigerator is open and empty, and a cork bulletin board sits flat on the floor, filled with brittle, yellowed union notices that’re dated at least two years ago. Whatever these guys are up to, they’ve only come back here recently.

  Back in the hallway, I stick my head in a room where the door is off its hinges. It takes me a second to weave inside, but when I do, I stop midstep on the tile floor. In front of me are row after row of open industrial showers, but the way they’re set up, it’s like a gas chamber—the nozzles are just pipes sticking out of the wall. And though I know they’re just showers, when I think of the miners washing away another grueling day of work, it’s truly one of the most depressing sights I’ve ever seen.

  “Harris, I got it!” Viv says, calling me back to the hallway, where she taps her pointer finger against a sign that says The Ramp. Below the words, there’s a tiny directional arrow pointing down another set of stairs.

  “You sure that’s the—?”

  She motions to the old metal punch clock that’s next to the sign, then looks back at the bulletin board and the refrigerator. No question about it. When miners used to fill this place, here’s where they started every day.

  Down the stairs, the hallway narrows, and the ceiling is low. From the mustiness alone, I know we’re in the basement. There are no more rooms off to the side—and not a single window in sight. Following another sign for The Ramp, we dead-end at a rusted blue metal door that’s caked in mud and reminds me of the door on an industrial freezer. I give it a sharp push, but the door seems to push back.

  “What’s wrong?” Viv asks.

  I shake my head and try again. This time, the door cracks open slightly, and a sharp, hot gust of air bursts out, licking me in the face. It’s a wind tunnel down there. I shove a little harder, and the door swings open, its rusty hinges screaming as the full dry heat of the breeze bounces against our chests.

  “Smells like rocks,” Viv says, covering her mouth.

  Reminding myself that the man in the parking lot told us to come this way, I will myself to take my first step into the narrow concrete hallway.

  As the door shuts behind us, the wind dies down, but the dryness is still in the air. I keep licking my lips, but it doesn’t help. It’s like eating a sand castle.

  Up ahead, the hallway curves to the right. There are some full mop buckets along the floor, and a fluorescent light in the ceiling. Finally, a sign of life. Heading deeper into the turn, I’m not sure what we’re breathing, but as I taste the bitter air on my tongue, it’s dusty, hot, and bad. On the left-hand wall, there’s a 1960s-era Fallout Shelter sign with an arrow pointing dead ahead. Caked in dirt, you can still make out the black and yellow nuclear logo.

  “Fallout shelter?” Viv asks, confused. “Eight thousand feet below ground? A little overkill, no?”

  Ignoring the comment, I stay focused on the hallway, and as it straightens out, we get our second sign of life.

  “What is it?” Viv says, hesitantly moving forward.

  Up ahead, the right and left sides of the hall are covered from floor to ceiling with metal storage racks that look like shallow bookshelves. But instead of books, they’re filled with gear: dozens of knee-high rubber boots, thick nylon tool belts, and most important, mine lights and white construction helmets.

  “Is this gonna fit?” Viv asks, forcing a laugh as she pulls a helmet onto her short-cropped Afro. She’s trying her best to act ready for this, but before she convinces me, she has to convince herself. “What’s this?” she adds, nervously tapping the metal clip on the front of her helmet.

  “For the light,” I say, pulling one of the mine lights off the shelf. But as I attempt to grab the round metal bulb, I notice that it’s connected by a black wire to a red plastic case that holds a paperback-sized version of a car battery—and that the battery is connected to some clips on the shelf. This isn’t just a bookcase—it’s a charging station.

  Unlatching the clips, I unhook the battery, pull it from the shelf, and slide it onto one of the nearby tool belts. As Viv fastens it around her waist, I thread the wire over the back of her shoulder and hook the light onto the front of her helmet. Now she’s all set. An official miner.

  She flips a switch, and the light turns on. Twenty-four hours ago, she would’ve bobbed her head back and forth, teasing me by shining the light in my face. Now the light shines on her feet as she stares at the floor. The excitement’s long gone. It’s one thing to say you’re going underground; it’s entirely another thing to do it.

  “Don’t say it . . .” she warns as I’m about to open my mouth.

  “It’s safer than being—”
>
  “I said don’t say it. I’ll be fine,” she insists. She clenches her teeth and takes a deep breath of the hot, chalky air.

  “How do we know which ones are charged?” she asks. Reading my expression, she points to the bookshelves on our right and left. Both are filled with battery packs. “What if one’s a check-in station and one’s a checkout?” she adds, knocking on the red casing of her own battery. “For all we know, this came back ten minutes ago.”

  “You think that’s how they—?”

  “That’s what they do at laser tag,” she points out.

  I give her a long look. I hate myself for bringing her here.

  “You keep yours from the left, I’ll take mine from the right,” I say. “Either way, we’ll at least have one that works.”

  She nods at the logic as I grab two orange mesh construction vests from a nearby garbage can. “Put this on,” I tell her, tossing one of the vests her way.

  “Why?”

  “The same reason every bad spy movie has someone sneaking in dressed as a janitor. An orange vest’ll take you anywhere . . .”

  Skeptically examining herself as she tightens the Velcro straps on the side of the vest, she adds, “I look like I should be doing roadwork.”

  “Really? I was thinking more crossing guard.”

  She laughs at the joke—and from the smile on her face, it looks like it’s exactly what she needed.

  “Feeling better?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, unable to hide her smirk. “But I’ll get there.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  She likes the sound of that.

  “So you really think we can pull this off?” she asks.

  “Don’t ask me—I’m the one who said you can’t win ’em all.”

  “You still feel that way?”

  I lift one shoulder and move up the dust-filled hallway.

  Viv’s right behind me.

  At the far end of the hall, the metal bookshelves are gone, and the basement walls are instead lined with wooden benches that sit end to end for at least a few hundred feet. Based on the photos in the brochure, during the mine’s heyday, miners lined up here every morning, waiting for their ride to work. Back in D.C., we do the same thing on the metro—line up underground and take the subway downtown. The only difference out here is, the subway isn’t a horizontal ride. It’s vertical.