The Zero Game

by Brad Meltzer

  My voice cracks as I say the words. She knows it’s true—and she’s smart enough to catch the consequences: She’s seen how fast Janos moves. If she doesn’t take him out now, he’ll be all over her in an instant.

  I feel Janos’s grip tightening around my wrist. He’s ready to dump me and make a jump for Viv.

  “Do it now!” I shout.

  “C’mon, Vivian—you really ready to kill your friend?” Janos asks.

  With the nine iron poised in the air, Viv stares down—her eyes dancing from Janos to me, then back to Janos. She’s only got a few seconds to decide. She pulls the club back. Her hands begin to shake, and the tears roll down her cheeks. She doesn’t want to do it, but the longer she stands there, the more she realizes there’s no other choice.

  81

  HIT HIM, VIV! Hit him now!” I shout.

  Viv’s got the club up in the air. She still doesn’t swing.

  “Be smart, Vivian,” Janos adds. “Regret is the worst burden to bear.”

  “Harris, you sure?” she asks one last time.

  Before I can answer, Janos squeezes my wrist, trying to break my grip. I can’t hold on to his ear any longer.

  “D-Do it!” I demand.

  With his back to Viv, Janos stays focused on my wrist, digging his fingers in deep. He doesn’t even bother looking back at her. Like all gamblers, he’s playing the odds. If Viv didn’t swing by now, she’s not swinging at all.

  “Viv, please . . . !” I beg.

  Her whole body’s shaking as the tears come even faster . . . She starts to sob, completely overwhelmed—but the golf club’s still up over her head.

  “Harris . . .” she calls out. “I don’t want to—”

  “You can do it,” I tell her. “It’s okay.”

  “A-Are you . . . ?”

  “I swear, Viv—it’s okay . . . I promise . . .”

  With one last stab, Janos jams his finger into my wrist. My grip pops open—but just as I slip, sliding down into the hole, he doesn’t let me fall. Instead, he grabs my fingers, crushing them together. A wide smile takes his face. He likes being in control . . . especially when he can use it to his advantage.

  I dangle by my arm, watching Viv carefully. “Please . . . please do it!” I beg.

  Viv swallows hard, barely able to speak. “J-Just . . . God forgive me,” she adds.

  Janos stops. He hears something in her voice. Twisting slightly, he turns toward her.

  Their eyes lock, and Janos checks again for himself. The rise and fall of her chest . . . the way she keeps readjusting her grip . . . even the way she keeps licking her bottom lip. In the end, Janos lets out a small, almost inaudible laugh. He doesn’t think she has it in her.

  He’s wrong.

  I nod at Viv. She sniffles up a final noseful of tears and mouths the word Bye. Turning back to Janos, she plants her feet.

  C’mon, Viv—it’s him or you . . .

  Viv pulls the club back. Janos again laughs to himself. And all around us, the air-handlers continue to chug. It’s a frozen moment. And then . . . as a drop of sweat leaves her nose . . . Viv puts all her weight behind the club and swings away. Janos immediately lets go of my hand and turns to pounce on her.

  Janos expects me to fall back and drop to my death. But he doesn’t see the tiny foothold I’ve been balancing on for the past few minutes—a manmade divot that’s dug into the interior wall of the hole. The tip of my shoe grips the two-inch ledge. I flex my leg. And before either of them realizes what’s happening, I leap upward just enough to grab Janos by the back of his shirt. Lunging at Viv, he’s totally off balance. That’s his mistake—and the last one he’ll make in our little chess match. In any sport, especially politics, nothing works better than a good distraction. Barely able to hold the edge of the hole with my right hand, I yank him backwards with my left. He has no idea what’s happening. I give him a sharp tug toward the hole, duck down, and let gravity do the rest.

  “What’re you—?!” He never gets the words out. Tumbling out of control, Janos plummets backwards into the mouth of the hole. As he passes, he clutches at my shoulders . . . my waist . . . my legs . . . even the sides of my shoes. He’s moving too fast to get a handhold.

  “Nooo . . . !” he screams, his final word echoing upward as he plunges and disappears in the darkness. I hear him bounce off one of the interior walls . . . then another. There’s a raw, scraping sound as he ping-pongs back and forth the whole way down. The screaming never stops. Not until the muted thud at the bottom.

  A second later, a shrill siren wails from the depth of the hole. I’m not surprised. It’s the air intake system for the entire Capitol. Of course it’s alarmed. Capitol police won’t be far behind.

  As the siren continues to howl, I clutch the concrete ledge and struggle to catch my breath. I peer downward, studying the depth of the darkness. Nothing moves. Except for the alarm, it’s a perfectly still black pond. The more I look at it, the more mesmerizing it gets.

  “Harris, you okay?” Viv asks, kneeling down toward the edge.

  “Get away from the hole!” a deep voice screams. Behind her, three Capitol policemen storm into the room, their guns aimed at both of us.

  “Stewie, I need a lockdown on all vents!” the tallest officer barks into his radio.

  “It’s not what you—!”

  In an eye blink, the other two officers grip my armpits and haul me out of the hole. Tossing me facefirst on the ground, they try to cuff my hands behind my back. “My arm . . . !” I scream as they bend it back.

  “You’re hurting him!” Viv shouts as the tall officer pins her down and puts her own set of cuffs on. “His arm’s broken!”

  Both our faces are dripping with blood. They’re not listening to a word.

  “Vents are going down,” a man’s voice squawks through the radio. “Anything else?”

  “We got a body in the hallway and an unconscious guy up here!” the officer with the radio adds.

  “Barry tried to kill me!” Viv yells.

  Barry?

  “We were attacked!” she says. “Check our IDs—we work here!”

  “She’s telling the truth,” I stutter, barely able to pick my head up. My arm feels like it’s snapped in half.

  “So where’s the attacker?” the shortest officer asks.

  “Down there!” Viv shouts, flat on her chest and pointing with her chin. “Check the hole!”

  “H-His body . . .” I add. “You’ll . . . You’ll find his body . . .”

  The short officer motions to the tall one, who lifts the walkie-talkie to his lips.

  “Reggie, you there yet?”

  “Almost . . .” says a deeper voice that comes simultaneously from the radio and the opening of the hole. He’s down at the bottom. “Oh, man . . .” he finally adds.

  “What you got?” the officer with the radio asks.

  “There’s some bloodstains down here . . .”

  “I told you!” Viv shouts.

  “. . . all the explosive sniffers are crushed . . . the trail keeps going . . . and from the looks of it, he ripped the grating clear off the safety gate . . .”

  Oh, no.

  “That’s a forty-foot drop,” the officer with the radio says.

  “Oh, he definitely did himself some damage,” Reggie says through the radio. “But I’ll tell you right now . . . I don’t see a body.”

  I lift my chin off the ground. My arm’s the least of my worries.

  “Jeff, make sure maintenance locks down those vents, and get Reggie some backup,” the shorter officer says to the one with the radio. “And Reggie . . . !” he adds, leaning over the edge of the hole and shouting as loud as he can, “. . . get outta there right now and start following that blood! He’s hurt, with at least a few broken paws. He couldn’t have gotten far.”

  82

  THEY STILL HAVEN’T FOUND him. They never will.

  I’m not surprised. Janos was hired for a reason. Like any great magician, he not only k
new how to keep a secret—he also knew the value of a good disappearing act.

  It’s been seven hours since we left the depths of the Capitol basement and air tunnels. To double-check that the air system wasn’t compromised, they evacuated the entire building, which hadn’t been done since the anthrax scares a few years back. They moved us, too.

  Most people know that if the Capitol is under a full-on terrorist assault, the bigwigs and hotshots get relocated to a top-secret off-site location. If the attack’s on a smaller scale, they go to Fort McNair, in Southwest D.C. But if the attack is minor and containable—like a gas canister thrown in the hallways—they come here, right across the street, to the Library of Congress.

  Standing outside the closed doors of the European Reading Room on the second floor, I sink down to sit on the marble floor. My shoulder eventually rests on the leg of one of the enormous glass display cases that line the hallway and are filled with historical artifacts.

  “Sir—please don’t sit there,” a nearby FBI agent with silver hair and a pointed nose says.

  “What’s it make a difference, huh?” my lawyer, Dan Cohen, threatens as he rubs a hand over his own shaved head. “Don’t be an ass—let the poor guy take a seat.” An old friend from my Georgetown Law days, Dan’s a half-Jewish, half-Italian matzoh-ball-meatball of a guy stuffed into a cheap, poorly tailored suit. After graduation, while most of us went to firms or to the Hill, Dan went back to his old neighborhood in Baltimore, hung out an honest-to-God shingle, and took the cases most lawyers laugh at. Proudly tracing his family tree back to his great, great-uncle, gangster Meyer Lansky, Dan always liked a good fight. But by his own admission, he no longer has any connections in Washington. That’s exactly why I called him. I’ve had enough of this town.

  “Harris, we should go,” Dan says. “You’re falling apart, bro.”

  “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m fine,” I insist.

  “C’mon . . . don’t be a jackass. You’ve been through five and a half hours of interrogation—even the agents said you should take a break. Look at you—you can’t even stand.”

  “You know what they’re doing in there,” I say, pointing to the closed doors.

  “It doesn’t matter . . .”

  “It does matter! To me it does. Now just give me a few more minutes.”

  “Harris, we’ve been waiting here two hours already—it’s almost midnight; you need to get your nose set, and a cast for your arm.”

  “My arm’s fine,” I say, readjusting the sling the paramedics gave me.

  “But if you—”

  “Dan, I know you mean well—and I love you for it—but just be humble for once and acknowledge that this is one part of the problem you can’t fix.”

  “Humble?” he asks, making a face. “I hate humble. And I hate humble even more on you.”

  Glancing down between my knees, I see my reflection in the marble floor. “Yeah, well . . . sometimes it’s not as bad as you think.”

  He says something else, but I’m not listening. Sunk down, I take another look at the closed doors. After everything I’ve been through, this is the one thing I care about right now.

  Forty minutes later, I can feel the thump of my heartbeat pumping down the length of my arm. But when the doors to the reading room open, every ounce of pain is gone . . . and an entirely new one takes its place.

  Viv walks out of the room with two bandages over her eyebrow. Her bottom lip is cut and swollen, and she’s holding a baby blue ice pack to her other eye.

  I climb to my feet and try to make contact, but a double-breasted suit quickly steps between us.

  “Why don’t you leave her alone for a bit,” her lawyer says, putting his palm against my chest. He’s a tall African-American man with a bushy caterpillar mustache. When we were first taken in, I told Viv she could use Dan, but her parents quickly brought in their own attorney. I don’t blame them. Since then, the FBI and the lawyer have made sure Viv and I haven’t seen, heard, or spoken to each other. I don’t blame them for that either. It’s a smart move. Distance your client. I’ve never met this lawyer before, but from the suit alone, I can tell he’ll get the job done. And while I’m not sure how Viv’s family can afford him, considering all the press this’ll get, I don’t think he’s worried. “Did you hear what I said, son? She’s had a long night.”

  “I want to talk to her,” I say.

  “Why? So you can mess her life up even more than you have already?”

  “She’s my friend,” I insist.

  “Mr. Thornell, it’s okay,” Viv says, nudging him aside. “I can . . . I’ll be fine.”

  Checking to be sure, Thornell decides to take her cue. He steps about two feet away. Viv gives him another look, and he heads back to the display cases, where Dan and the other FBI agent are. For now, we’ve got the corner of the gilded hallway all to ourselves.

  I look over at Viv, but she avoids my gaze, dropping her eyes to the floor. It’s been eight hours since we’ve last spoken. I’ve spent the past three trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to say. I don’t remember a single word.

  “How’s your eye?” “How’s your arm?” we both ask simultaneously.

  “I’ll live,” we both reply.

  It’s enough to get a small smile out of Viv, but she quickly pulls it down. I’m still the one who got her in this mess. Whatever she’s feeling, it’s clearly taking a toll.

  “Y’know, you didn’t have to do what you did in there,” she finally says.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not a moron, Harris—they told me what you said . . .”

  “Viv, I never—”

  “You want me to quote ’em? That you forced me into this . . . that when Matthew died, you threatened me into helping you . . . that you said you’d ‘break my face’ if I didn’t get on the private jet and tell everyone I was your intern. How could you say that?”

  “You’re taking it out of context—”

  “Harris, they showed me the statement you wrote!”

  I turn to the classical murals on the wall, unable to face her. There are four murals, each one with a woman soldier in ancient armor, representing a different stage in a nation’s development: Adventure, Discovery, Conquest, and Civilization. They should have another one labeled Regret. My answer’s a whisper. “I didn’t want you to follow the ship down.”

  “What?”

  “You know how these things go—who cares if we saved the day? I made bets on legislation . . . misappropriated a corporate jet . . . and arguably contributed to the death of my best friend . . . Even if you were there for the very best reasons—and believe me, you were the only innocent in the whole crowd—they’ll take your head off just because you were standing next to me. Assassination by association.”

  “So you just twist the truth and take the fall for everything?”

  “Believe me, Viv—after what I sucked you into, I deserve far worse than that.”

  “Don’t be such a martyr.”

  “Then don’t be so naive,” I shoot back. “The moment they think you were acting on your own is the exact same moment they put you on the catapult and fire you.”

  “So?”

  “Whatta you mean, So?”

  “I mean, So? So what if I lose my job? Big whoop. It’s not like they gave me the scarlet letter. I’m a seventeen-year-old page who lost her internship. I wouldn’t quite consider it the end of my professional career. Besides, there are more important things than a stupid job—like family. And friends.”

  Staring me down with one eye, she holds the ice pack to the other.

  “I agree,” I tell her. “I just . . . I just didn’t want them to fire you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “So what happened in there?” I ask.

  “They fired me,” she says nonchalantly.

  “What? How could they—?”

  “Don’t lo
ok at me like that. At the end of the day, I still broke the cardinal rule of being a page: I went off campus without authorization and stayed overnight without permission. Worst of all, I lied to my parents and the principal, then flew off to South Dakota.”

  “But I told them—”

  “It’s the FBI, Harris. They may be hard-asses, but they’re not complete idiots. Sure, maybe you can force me on a plane, or to run an errand or two, but what about getting me to the motel, and to the mine, then down the shaft, and into the lab? Then we gotta catch the return flight back. You’re a lot of things, Harris, but kidnapper’s not on the list. You really thought they’d believe all that crap?”

  “When I told it, it was flawless.”

  “Flawless, huh? Break my face?”

  I can’t help but laugh.

  “Exactly,” she says. Viv pauses, finally taking the ice pack off her face. “I still appreciate you trying, though, Harris. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “No. I did.”

  She stands there, refusing to argue. “Can I ask you one last thing?” she says, motioning to the ground. “When we were down there with Janos . . . and you were stuck in the hole . . . were you standing on that little ledge the entire time?”

  “Just toward the end . . . my foot stumbled on it.”

  She’s silent for a moment. I know what she’s after.

  “So when you asked me to swing the golf club . . . ?”

  There we go. She wants to know if I was really willing to sacrifice myself, or if I just did it to distract Janos.

  “Does it matter?” I ask.

  “I don’t know . . . maybe.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’d have asked you to swing either way.”

  “That’s easy to say now.”

  “Sure is, but I didn’t find the foothold till the last second, when he broke my grip.”

  She stops as the consequences sink in. It’s no lie. I would’ve done whatever it took to save her. Foothold or not.

  “Take it as a compliment,” I add. “You’re worth it, Viv Parker.”

  Her cheeks rise uncontrollably. She has no idea what to say.