Endgame Novella #7

by James Frey

  We pick our way through the basement, which is filled with trash and pools of water. Rats scurry out of the way of our flashlight beams. Ariadne is in the lead, and Jackson is walking with me.

  “You should kill her,” he whispers to me. “That’s what our trainers would tell you.”

  I don’t say anything. For one thing, I know Ariadne is listening, and even if she can’t hear us, she’s thinking the same thing about us. Any Player would be. She now knows where the weapon is. She doesn’t need me, and I don’t need her. The smart thing to do would be to eliminate her and remove the Minoans from this particular equation.

  Still, I’m surprised to hear Jackson say it after everything he said to me about working together. Maybe seeing Sauer die has changed his mind. Or, more likely, he just doesn’t trust Ariadne. Do I trust her? I don’t owe her anything. So why am I not taking her out?

  We come to a stairway. I walk beside Ariadne as we go up, leaving Jackson to follow behind us.

  “Your brother raises an interesting point,” Ariadne says, not bothering to keep her voice low. She doesn’t care if Jackson hears us or not.

  “What’s interesting about it?”

  “I think you don’t want to kill me,” she says.

  “And that’s a problem for you?”

  “For me, no. But he’s right. It would be the smart thing to do.”

  “So now you’re my trainer too?”

  She snorts. “If I were, many things would have been done differently.”

  “I bet,” I say. “And do you want to kill me?”

  “If I did, you would be dead already,” she says. “You shouldn’t have let me go first up the shaft either. I could have killed your brother and left his body to block your way.”

  Behind me, Jackson makes a sound to let us know he hears every word.

  “But you didn’t,” I say. “Which means you don’t want to kill me either.”

  “Mmm,” she says. “Not yet, anyway.”

  Before she can say anything else, bullets whiz past our heads. Jackson yelps in surprise as Ariadne and I flatten ourselves against the wall on either side of the stairwell, draw our guns, and return fire into the blackness above us. There’s a grunt, and then a body rolls down the stairs toward us.

  “Up or down?” I say to Ariadne.

  “Up,” she says.

  We run up the remaining stairs, not knowing what we’re heading into. We burst through a doorway and into a hallway. Very faint light fills the corridor, along with a cold wind and swirls of snow. We’re on the first floor of the museum, in a part where the walls have been shattered by bombing. The snow outside has increased to a blizzard and is blowing through the hallway.

  Several figures run toward us through the snow. “Stay in the stairwell!” I yell to Jackson and start shooting. On the other side of the hall, Ariadne does the same. Our attackers return fire, and bits of the wall explode as the bullets hit them.

  I briefly glance behind me. The hallway keeps going, but I don’t know where, and running won’t accomplish anything. We have to make our stand here. I concentrate on stopping the advancing enemies.

  Ariadne brings one down. I get another. There are still two more. I aim at one, but when I pull the trigger of my pistol, it clicks. I’m empty. And I don’t have another clip.

  I pull out the knife hidden inside my boot and run. Ariadne follows. She continues to shoot as I dodge, trying to make myself as difficult to hit as possible in a hallway maybe twenty feet across. The snow and dark at least provide a little cover.

  One of the remaining figures falls. The other is close enough that I see him point his gun right at me. With a burst of speed, I let my feet slide out from under me on the marble floor. My body shoots forward in the snow, and I hit the man dead on. He falls on top of me. My knife is ready, and I drive it up and into his guts. He gasps, and a moment later coughs blood into my face. I push the knife deeper.

  I push the body off me. Ariadne is scouting for more shooters. The hallway appears to be clear, though, and she comes back to where I’m kneeling beside the man, going through his coat.

  “Who are they?” Ariadne asks.

  “No idea,” I say. “But I don’t think they’re soldiers. He’s wearing civilian clothes.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” she says.

  She’s right. Still, they don’t look like MGB or any military group I know. It doesn’t really matter, though. Somehow they knew we were here.

  Jackson emerges from the stairwell and stands beside me. His flashlight illuminates the face of the dead man.

  “I know him,” he says.

  Ariadne and I look at him, surprised.

  “His name is Emerick Fischer. He’s a friend of Karl’s.”

  The three of us come to the realization at the same time.

  “We need to get back to the safe house,” I say. “Now.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ariadne

  The Cahokian safe house is no longer safe.

  When we arrive there, it’s empty. Ott, his wife and child, and Lottie and her child are gone. Every drawer has been rifled through, every closet opened, every possible hiding location overturned and ransacked.

  “Was there anything here for them to take?” I ask Boone.

  “No,” he says. “I wouldn’t have left them here alone if there’d been anything important. This place was temporary, only for this mission.”

  “What about weapons?” I ask him. “Passports. Cash.”

  Boone laughs. “You think I’d leave any of that here once other people knew about its location? Especially you? Are you carrying everything you had stashed at the Minoan place?”

  Of course I’m not. I found a hiding place for it, an abandoned building so decrepit that no one would think to scavenge there.

  “Actually,” Boone says. “I did leave a little something here.” He goes into another room and comes back carrying a small bag. He reaches in and hands me two clips. I reload. Then he hands me something else.

  “What’s this?” I say, looking at the thing in my hand. “Bazooka?”

  “Bubble gum,” Boone says as he loads his own weapon. He looks at me as he blows a bubble, which expands until it finally pops. “Give it a try.”

  “Maybe later,” I say, shaking my head.

  Jackson is not taking the new development well. He’d seemed like a former Player when we were escaping the basement, but now he’s gone soft again, letting his emotions get the best of him. He keeps walking around the rooms, as if his wife and son might have only wandered into one of them and aren’t gone.

  “I don’t understand,” he says.

  “I think it’s pretty clear,” Boone says. “Ott has ulterior motives for getting the weapon. And he’s willing to kill us for it.”

  Jackson shakes his head. “No,” he says. “It’s not possible. He and Lottie have been friends since they were children. I’ve known him for almost five years myself. Something else must have happened.”

  I have my doubts. I know Boone does as well. We exchange a glance, but neither of us says anything. Instead I say, “We need to get into something dry.”

  The one thing Boone did not take out of the safe house is clothing. He gets some for me, and I go into a bedroom and change into it. It’s all his size, and made for a man, so I have to roll up the sleeves of the shirt and the cuffs of the pants, but I don’t care. It feels good just to be dry and more or less warm again.

  When I come out, I find Boone in the kitchen, making coffee. His brother is elsewhere.

  “We need to talk,” Boone says, handing me a cup of coffee.

  Before I say anything, I take a sip. The warmth feels good. I hold the cup in my hands, letting it soothe the chill that has settled into my bones.

  “Are we working together now?” Boone asks before I can speak.

  “Because it feels that way.”

  “Is that what you want?” I ask.

  He sighs. “Can’t you ever just answe
r a question? I know you’re always thinking three steps ahead, but—”

  “Six steps,” I say. “As any Player would.”

  “All right, six steps,” he says. He sounds angry. “However many it takes, I guess. But what’s at the end of all the steps?”

  “The weapon.”

  “Right, the goddamn weapon,” says Boone. “It’s all about the weapon.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “For you, apparently. In case you haven’t noticed, my brother’s wife and little boy are missing.”

  “That has nothing to do with me,” I say.

  Boone reaches over and pokes my chest with his finger. Hard. “Is there anything in there?” he says. “Anything at all? Or just a frozen block of ice?”

  Part of me wants to throw the coffee in his face. But I calm myself. I don’t want him to see that he’s gotten to me. I set the cup on the counter, then cross my arms over my chest.

  “Get your priorities straight,” I say. “We’re Players. This is Endgame.”

  “Not yet, it isn’t,” says Boone.

  I shake my head. “Not the final battle,” I say. “But it’s still a battle. And in Endgame, people get hurt. They die. You know this. You’ve killed some of them yourself.”

  “Lottie hasn’t done anything to anyone,” Boone says. “And Bernard is a kid. I get it that Minoans do things differently than Cahokians do, but one thing we do is look out for our own, and not just ourselves.”

  “For all you know, Lottie is part of this,” I tell him. “And she’s not Cahokian,” I add.

  “And my brother? And Bernard?” says Boone. “Are you going to tell me he’s working for the Reds, or the Nazis, or some other people who want to get their hands on a super weapon they think will make them invincible? Maybe he’s really a Minoan operative, working with you.”

  He’s being ridiculous, impulsive, because he’s angry. I let him rant. Of course I don’t like the idea that children might get hurt in a fight over the weapon. I myself made the decision not to use violence in Ott’s apartment because there were children there. But there’s more at stake to the mission than the life of a little boy. This is the fate of the world we’re talking about, or at least the fate of my line, which ultimately is the same thing to a Player.

  “We don’t know that they’re in any danger,” I say when he calms down a little, trying to reason with him.

  He snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure they just went off to the park to go ice skating.”

  Neither of us says anything for a minute. Then Boone says, “We should probably just split up. Go our separate ways. I know you’re going to try to go after the weapon somehow. I guess I will too, if only to stop the Minoans from having it. It’s probably best if we don’t even think about helping each other out, since one or both of us might end up dead when this is all over.”

  What he’s saying actually makes sense, and is precisely how a Player should be thinking. It’s what I would say in his place. So I’m surprised to find that hearing him say it makes me feel sad. My face must register something of what I’m feeling, because Boone looks at me and says, “What?”

  I don’t know how to answer him, because I don’t actually know what I’m feeling. This is not something I’ve encountered before as a Player, this sudden and unexpected sense of doubt. But what am I doubting? My feelings about Endgame? My feelings about Boone? Everything feels tied together in a knot of conflicting thoughts, and I don’t know which string to try to unravel first.

  A banging sound shakes me from my temporary stupor. It’s coming from the front door. I look at Boone, and we silently agree on a temporary truce. We draw our weapons and head to the hall. The banging comes again, followed by a weak voice calling for help. It’s a woman’s voice.

  “That’s Greta!” Jackson says, emerging from the hallway.

  “Wait!” Boone says, grabbing his brother’s arm and stopping him from opening the door. “I’ll get it.” He looks at me, and I nod, agreeing to cover him.

  He opens the door. Greta collapses into his arms, sobbing. Her hair is awry, and there are tears frozen to her cheeks. A cut under one eye is crusted with dried blood.

  Jackson rushes past me and goes to Greta. “What happened? Where are the others? Lottie and Bernard? Are they all right?”

  Greta nods, but it takes her a moment to speak. “They have them.”

  “Who has them?” Jackson says, impatient for answers. “Who, Greta?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Men. A group of men. Six of them, maybe more. They came to the house and ordered us to go with them. Karl argued with them, tried to fight, but there were too many.”

  “Were they Soviet?” Boone asks.

  Greta shakes her head. “I don’t know who they are,” she says. “They spoke German.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I say. “Boone speaks German. I speak German.”

  Jackson turns and looks at me. “Maybe they were Minoans,” he says. “Maybe she told her people to come while we were gone.” He runs toward me. “If they hurt my wife and—”

  Boone lets go of Greta and grabs him. “Stop!” he says. “They weren’t Minoans.” He looks at me. “Were they?”

  “No,” I say.

  “How can you believe her?” Jackson says. “She just showed up at Ott’s house with the story about the Soviets. How do we know it wasn’t all a lie to convince Sauer to show us where the weapon is?”

  “Sauer tried to kill us,” I remind him.

  “But you didn’t know he would do that,” Jackson argues, refusing to let it go. He looks at Boone. “It’s the only thing that makes sense, Sam. It has to be her.”

  Sam looks at Greta, who is now sitting on the couch, crying softly.

  “Did the men say the word Endgame, or talk about Minoans or Cahokians?”

  “No,” says Greta. “Nothing. They demanded to know where Sauer was. That’s all.”

  I ask the question that has been on my mind since Boone opened the door and Greta came inside. “How did you get away?”

  If someone took her, there’s no way they would allow her to just escape. They would surely have stopped her or killed her. She’s here for some reason that she has yet to reveal.

  “They brought me back,” she says. “In a car. Pushed me out a few blocks away.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  She reaches into the pocket of her coat and pulls out a piece of paper. “To bring you this,” she says. She holds the paper out to Boone. He takes it and unfolds it.

  “It’s a note,” he says. His eyes scan the page. “They want us to bring them Sauer and the weapon.”

  “Or what?” I ask, knowing that there’s more.

  Boone’s eyes flick to his brother, then to me. “Or they’ll kill the others. One every hour starting at midnight.”

  As Greta cries out and begins to sob, Jackson looks at his watch. “That gives us only two hours,” he says. “And we don’t have Sauer or the weapon.”

  “They don’t know that,” I say. To Boone I add, “Do they say who they are?”

  “No. It just gives an address.” He reads it to me, but it isn’t familiar.

  “That’s in the industrial part of town,” Jackson says. “Probably an abandoned factory or something like that.” He’s now sitting beside Greta, rubbing her shoulders as she continues to cry.

  I motion for Boone to follow me into the kitchen, where we can talk in private. “There’s something not right about this,” I say. “If the MGB wanted us, they wouldn’t play this game.”

  “I don’t know,” Boone says. “Between us, we’ve already killed seven of their men, two of them inside their own headquarters. Maybe they think it’s safer to take hostages and make us come to them.”

  “That’s not how they work,” I argue. “And how did they find this house? Something isn’t right.”

  Boone sighs. “I agree it’s weird. But what other option do we have?”

  “That’s exactly what these people are count
ing on,” I say. What I don’t say is that he’s the one who cares about what happens to the hostages, not me. We’ve already had that argument, though, and there’s no point in bringing it up again. Besides, although he’s accused me of not having a heart, I do appreciate how he feels, even if I won’t tell him so.

  “Well, we can’t just storm in there and try to get the hostages out,” he says. “And there’s still the problem of us not having anything to give them. What reason do they have to keep anyone alive if we have nothing they want?”

  “We know where the weapon is,” I say.

  “Neither of us would ever tell them where it is, though,” he says. “And it’s underwater now anyway.”

  “There’s still Jackson,” I remind him. “They have his wife and child.”

  I wait for him to say that Jackson would never give up the information. We both know that isn’t true, though. He would do anything to save his family. He may have once been a Player, but now he’s a husband and a father. Several times now we’ve seen him go against his Player training. With the fate of his family at stake, I have no doubt he would abandon it completely.

  I think hard, following possible paths, then doubling back when they don’t work out. I consider all the options, discarding one after the other as impractical. Finally, one remains.

  “I have an idea,” I say.

  Boone lifts an eyebrow. “Am I going to like it?”

  “No. It involves you trusting me. Can you do that?”

  He looks into my eyes, looking for answers. Instinctively, I put up walls to keep him out. Then, slowly, I lower my defenses. I need him to believe me. I look back at him, not blinking.

  “For now,” he says.

  “Good,” I say as I draw my arm back. “Because I’m about to break your nose.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Boone

  Ariadne’s punch sends me sailing out the door of the kitchen and back into the living room. I reach up to touch my nose and feel it crunch when I try to move it. She really has broken it. There’s no time to think about it, though, as she’s coming at me.