Endgame Novella #5

by James Frey

  When we were done finding the complex, we went to a café with outdoor seating, along a bustling street, about a half mile from the compound. I ordered four plates of mezes—something akin to appetizers—that we’d enjoyed the most since our arrival.

  “It’s going to be tough,” Kat said. “We don’t know what’s on the other side of that wall. It might be a courtyard or it might be a roof. Remind me of the detonation time again.”

  I looked at my watch, doing the math to compare the current time to California time. “Two in the morning. So we’ll have the cover of darkness. Much easier.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kat said. “I think they’re always watching their place. I bet they have people watching that alley twenty-four hours a day. Couldn’t you feel it, Mike? I could tell we were being watched.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just saying that it’ll be easier in the dark.”

  “Unless they have more guards at night.”

  I took a bite of something called borek, which seemed to be a savory cousin of baklava. “Do you still think that these guys are aware of the meteor?”

  “Definitely,” Kat said. “Look over there.” She pointed to a newsstand. “There’s an English paper over there with US news. And from what Agatha said, all of the Players watch for astronomical signs, just in case they represent the aliens. They’ll have known about it, and they’ll be waiting for an invitation to see if that was the true sign of the Calling.”

  “What if that meteor was a real sign, and they’re going to get a real invitation? What if they already have?”

  She frowned. “We need to Play as if this is the invitation. We need to stick to the plan. If they’re already somewhere on Earth looking for clues, then we’re screwed, but there’s no way to know. I mean, we don’t even know which person at the compound is the Player. Or if the Player is even at the compound.”

  I smiled. “You used the phrase ‘we need to Play.’ As if we’re part of the game.”

  She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’m getting tired.” She took a slice of pide, a kind of oblong pizza topped with cheese, egg, and diced beef.

  “How big is the bomb? Yield, I mean. How big of an explosion?” I asked quietly. The busy street was overpowering our conversation, and I felt comfortable talking openly. There was no one at the tables beside us.

  “Bakr said it was big,” Kat said. “He said we needed to be at least 500 yards away when it goes off.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The whole thing weighs five or six pounds, and I’ve heard that a pound is pretty big. Like, half a pound is used in a car bomb.”

  We were supposed to pick the bomb up tomorrow. Bakr’s connections had shipped the plastic explosives to a fish market down on the Bosporus Strait. We already had the detonator in our bag—all incorporated into a fully functioning clock radio.

  “So,” I said, “we don’t need to worry as much about where we put it—on one side of their wall or not. If we put it in that small parking lot, it’ll take out all the cars and knock down the walls on all three sides, you know?”

  She shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “So do we even need to be in the parking area? We could put it in the alley, up against the compound wall.”

  Kat nodded her head emphatically. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s smart. We’re not trying to kill anybody with this thing. We’re just trying to leave an invitation.”

  “Speaking of which,” I said, chewing a piece of kofte—a sausagey meatball thing. I swallowed. “The thermite—what if we put it up on a wall and then the bomb destroys the wall?”

  “We trained that over and over. We light the fuse on the thermite tarp at the same time we plant the bomb. If we secure it properly, it should burn itself into the wall before the bomb even goes off.”

  “You can use explosions to stop things from burning,” I said. “You ever see Hellfighters? It’s John Wayne fighting fires at oil rigs. He’d set off a bomb by the fire, and the bomb would suck up all the oxygen and put the fire out.”

  “Thermite supplies its own oxygen. It can burn underwater.”

  “Really?”

  “We’ll be fine,” she said. “Bakr knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Then where are we going to lay it out?” I said. “I wish we could ditch it altogether.”

  “Then how are we going to lead the Player to Munich?” Kat asked. “Wait. Let’s not even put it next to the compound. Let’s not even put it there on the same day. We’ll put it in the alley—that they all have to drive through—so they’ll see it, maybe think it’s a warning, and then the next day we’ll plant the bomb.”

  “Do you think it’ll go against our planned timeline?” I asked. “The other teams might be using their thermite signs on the same day as their bomb. Will this give the Minoans an advantage?”

  “The only advantage is that he might go to Munich a day early, but that’s fine, because not all the bombs are going off around the world at the same time. We still have to go through this whole mess again in Baghdad.”

  She chewed a bite of her kofte. “But from what Walter said, they’re expecting the big bomb. They’re expecting something big.”

  I looked over to the TV screen in the café. There was an Olympic report. It must have been some kind of preview since the games didn’t start for a few more days.

  “I’ve always wanted to go to the Olympics,” Kat said, gesturing to the TV with her fork. “Not like this, though.”

  I turned to see the TV. “If everything goes to plan, we might be able to see an event or two.”

  “After we’ve possibly killed a bunch of teenagers?” she said, turning back to face me. “I don’t think I’ll be able to enjoy any of them.”

  “I checked the schedule,” I said. “There are no medals being awarded on September fifth. It’s going to be a quiet day, and I think that’s good for us. There will be a lot of people in the Olympic plaza. We’ll fit in, and no one needs to expect a thing.”

  “Unless the talks go wrong and we have to ambush them. The backup plan is supposed to have six snipers in place to take out the Players. How are we supposed to hide rifles?”

  “There’s rifle shooting in the Olympics,” I said. “We’ll just keep our guns in cases and act confident. No one will be the wiser.”

  “So we’re supposed to look like athletes?” Kat asked.

  “Sure. What do target-shooting athletes even look like? We don’t even have to look fit.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I wasn’t meaning you,” I said with an embarrassed laugh. “You look good—I mean, really good. I meant people like Walter, with a little too much weight around the middle. Speaking of which, what is on this pide? It’s fantastic.” I pulled another piece off and wolfed it down.

  Kat did look good. She was beautiful, and any guy should have felt lucky to be having a fake vacation with her in an exotic city, thousands of miles from our real life.

  But Mary was always in the back of my mind. And Bruce. The two of them together.

  We changed the subject to other things—to the crazy traffic in front of us, which seemed so disorganized, to the food, and to the architecture that was so foreign and magnificent. At Kat’s request, we stopped at the Hagia Sophia on the way back to the hotel. It was amazing: a huge building with a grand dome in its center, surrounded by four minarets. It had been a Christian church, then a cathedral, then a mosque—each conqueror recognizing its beauty and not wanting to destroy it, just remodeling it for his own religion.

  While we were there, we heard the Islamic call to prayer, echoing from several minarets at once. We stood silently and listened.

  Even though the Hagia Sophia was no longer a religious building—it had been converted into a museum in 1935—I sat down and silently prayed. I wasn’t a praying man and never had been, so speaking to God fit me better in a museum full of tourists than in a church. But I poured out my heart. I knew what we were going to do, knew that people were likely goi
ng to die. And I knew how many people would die if I didn’t go through with our plans.

  If humanity was just the product of aliens, did that mean there was no God? I pushed that thought out of my mind and concentrated on my prayer.

  But, even now, equipped with guns, C4, and thermite, I was starting to worry that all of this was a lie. I trusted Mary far more than I’d ever trusted John or Walter, or Kat or Bruce, but I wondered now if Mary had been brainwashed. Was I brainwashed? I hadn’t seen over the wall of the compound, but I knew it housed far more people than just the Player we were targeting. We had a bomb with five or six pounds of C4, and that was going to be a big explosion. Was this going to kill innocent people? Was it going to kill children?

  Could I turn my back on this now? Kat couldn’t carry out the plan without me if I just ran away, could she? I’d walk away, and the Minoans would survive. So would the Sumerians.

  But she might be able to do it all on her own. It wasn’t going to be hard unless she got seen, and she was too smart to get seen. She could go into that parking area and plant the thermite without anybody’s help.

  In front of the Hagia Sophia, we held hands and walked casually. Kat had her camera hanging around her neck.

  A man came up to us—we were surrounded by tourists, and he was obviously looking to make a buck.

  “Ben bir fotoraf alabilir miyim?” he asked. I thought that Kat and I had learned the basics of Turkish, but we both stared back at him blankly.

  He made a motion with his index fingers and thumbs. “Fotoraf?”

  “Oh,” Kat said. “Yes. Fotoraf. Evet lütfen.”

  She handed the camera to him, and we leaned close together. He snapped a picture.

  “One more,” she said. “Bir tane daha.”

  Kat looked at me. “Well, we are supposed to be on vacation.” And before I could say anything, she turned and kissed me.

  And I kissed her back. Because Mary was on the other side of the world. Because she was with Bruce. Because Kat was gorgeous. Because we could both be dead soon. Because, because, because . . .

  Kat went back to the hotel, and I told her I’d join her in a while. I went to a café that was closer to the compound. I sat outside as the sun set, eating baklava and watching for any movement. I went through two more helpings of baklava and a plate of mezes. I recognized two of them—hummus and falafel. Those had made their way to Southern California. But there was also afelia, stifado, and halloumi cheese, all of which still felt foreign.

  A big black Mercedes pulled out of the alley, turning away from me and heading north. No one in the car looked at me, but why would they? And besides, did the lines live in fear that someone would attack their houses? Did the Players declare war on other Players? Nothing Walter or John or Agatha had said implied that.

  I wondered what Mary was doing right now. I checked my watch. It was just after noon in California, so two o’clock in Veracruz. Had they found the house yet? I was sure they would have. It was one Walter knew a lot about. It wasn’t even a compound like this one. It was just a house. Expensive, to be sure, but just a house. Walter had even told that squad the name of their target.

  Our only direction was that the Turkish Player was a teenage boy, a couple of years younger than me.

  I ate the last bite of baklava, paid my bill, and left. I crossed the street, heading toward the alley and the compound.

  The compound had a parking area for just three or four cars. The entrance was on the north side, the door just a blank piece of metal. The cars were extremely nice: an Alfa Romeo and a Bentley. It was dark, and I walked into the small area. It was probably 50 feet by 30. On the west and south sides were blank walls of a stone building that rose three stories. I was hoping to find a patch of weeds in the corner, or someplace where we could hide a shoe-box bomb, but there was nothing. If we could guarantee that the cars wouldn’t move, we could leave the bomb under one of them, but that was a big question mark.

  The Player’s house was short. I couldn’t see any of it over the wall. I looked to the east, toward the alley. That was another stone building, but it had windows. I walked back to the street to get a better look. The wooden door had a metal gate in front of it. I tried it and smiled. It wasn’t locked—the latch looked broken. Painted above the door was TOPTAN SATI YERI. I tried the doorknob, and though the door felt flimsy, it was locked.

  I closed the gate and then jogged back to the café across the street. The waiter who had been serving me was stacking the chairs outside and taking them back into the shop to close for the evening.

  “Excuse me,” I said. I knew he spoke a little English, but not much.

  “Hello,” he said, turning toward me, a chair in his hands.

  “What does that sign mean?” I asked. “The translation.”

  “Toptan sat yeri?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “It is a . . . house. For things. To put things in.”

  “A factory?”

  “No, not factory. It is”—he set the chair down and put his hands on his hips—“a house for putting things in.”

  “A warehouse?”

  “Yes! Warehouse.”

  I pointed at the building on the other side of the alley—the three-story building that made the south wall of the compound’s parking area.

  “What is that?”

  “Office,” he said. “Closed.”

  “No one works there?”

  “Office,” he repeated. “No people.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I arrived at the Turkish fish market at four in the morning. I was wearing the traditional black thawb, a long-sleeved, ankle-length shirt. Kat was out in the rented truck, waiting for me to come out of the almost entirely male crowd of fishermen, auctioneers, grocers, and restaurateurs.

  I felt completely out of place in this hectic, fast-talking mass of people. All around me was bickering and bartering. This was no place to be timid, but I couldn’t assert myself without knowing the language better. Instead I stayed in the center of the aisles, arms folded as though in judgment of the fish, looking at the fishmongers who were holding up their prize catches, but engaging no one.

  The man I was supposed to find would be wearing a red taqiyah, a round skullcap. It reminded me of a short, squat fez, complete with a top knot and small tassel. And, in case anyone else was wearing anything similar, he was going to have a long gold necklace with a large round green-and-black pendant that had Arabic writing on it. Lee and Lin had given me a photo of what the necklace looked like, and I’d memorized the symbol.

  As I walked the aisles, my mind wandered again to Mary, and to Kat. And at that moment, both my head and my heart told me that my mind ought to be wandering to Kat, not Mary. When I thought about Mary, I thought about betrayal and jealousy and Bruce—even if I was just being paranoid. When I thought about Kat, I remembered that she had volunteered to be on my team, all those many weeks—months—ago. We were a team. We thought alike. We worked together so well. We finished each other’s sentences. We finished each other’s thoughts.

  I could see the Bosporus just past the market. It smelled of fishing boats—oil, exhaust, fish, blood. All waterways were eventually connected. The water I saw out behind the market flowed into the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and to the beach Mary was on.

  But that was the closest connection I could draw to her.

  She was probably using the same cover story with Bruce that Kat and I were using—a young couple sharing the same hotel room.

  And Mary had asked for us to be separated. To be safe. But maybe it was because she wanted to be with Bruce.

  My mind snapped back into focus as I spotted the man. Red taqiyah, long chain with a green-and-black pendant. He was at the end of a row, lifting crates of large fish covered in ice.

  I stopped in front of him, and he set down the crate and wiped his wet hands on his apron. “Ne yapyorsun?”

  “I’m looking for anchovies from the Black Sea,” I said. “Y
ou are Salomao?”

  He looked at me with no sign of recognition.

  “No anchovies. Torik.”

  That was what he was supposed to say, but he was completely calm about it. It made me wonder how many times he had smuggled something.

  “I hear that anchovies make the best lakerda,” I said.

  He frowned and made a face. “No. Best lakerda made from Bosporus torik.”

  I dug into my pocket and pulled out a prearranged bundle of Turkish lira and handed it to him. He grabbed a cooler from behind him and set it down in front of me. “Fresh torik. High quality. You like.”

  “Teekkür ederim,” I said. Thank you.

  That finally got a smile from him, a snort at the poor accent. He patted the cooler. “You like.”

  I picked it up—it was heavy—and I carried it toward the street. Two of Salomao’s workers carried the tarp, rolled up like a carpet. When I got to the truck, Kat and I put the cooler in the bed of the pickup, and the workmen casually tossed the tarp in after it.

  It was still early in the morning, and we drove down a quiet road, then stopped under a cluster of shade trees. We climbed out and went to the cooler.

  As expected, it was full of fish. We pulled them all out, tossing them aside. But halfway down the cooler, covered in torik and ice, was a false bottom. Under it, we found the shoe-box bomb.

  On August 28, at 1:30 a.m., we dressed all in black, in Turkish robes that we’d bought at the market, and checked out of the hotel. I had parked the rental truck two blocks east of the compound. Our disassembled rifles now sat in our otherwise empty suitcase. Kat held the thermite sheet—it was folded and heavy. I didn’t know what thermite was made from—it was the hottest-burning chemical on the planet, or so Lee had told me—but Lee had painted it on thick, with the hope it would burn the Olympic symbol into the ground or the wall, or wherever each of the various squads was going to put it.

  I had a coil of fuse—Bakr had packed everyone’s bags with 50 feet of fuse just in case the situation called for it.