Endgame

by James Frey

  That day, I thought about my mother. I pictured her waiting for me back at our house. I thought about never seeing her again. Then I imagined the look on her face when I came through the door. I kept that image in my head as I forced myself to get to my knees, then to my feet. I kept my mother’s face in front of me as I stumbled a few feet, then as I began to walk. I kept telling myself that she was so close. When my blistered feet screamed for me to stop, I ignored them. When I slipped in the snow and fell, I shut my eyes and saw my mother smiling at me, telling me how much she loved me, and I got up again.

  I ran the whole way home like that, one step at a time. And when I finally did reach our front door, I went inside and collapsed in my mother’s arms. Even though my body was wrecked, I’d never felt so happy.

  I think about her now. I see her face, looking at me with that expression she has that means she’s worried but doesn’t want to let me know. I can tell she wants me to come home. I try to move my arms and legs, to move toward her, but I feel so heavy. I’m being dragged down into the black water, and my mother’s face starts to fade away.

  Then something unexpected happens—I’m looking at Ariadne. She’s standing in front of me just like she was a few minutes ago. Her eyes are locked on mine, and without saying a word, I know she’s asking me to trust her. And I do. I know I shouldn’t. Every Player instinct I have is screaming at me to fight her and her sister, even though I have almost no chance of winning. Instead I look into her eyes and know that I’m here now because she cares about me, that she sent me back into the cold and the dark because it was the only chance she had of saving me.

  Suddenly I want more than anything to be with her again. She and Cassandra are probably on their way out of the museum already. I don’t know where they’re going, or how I’ll find them. I only know that I have to try.

  At the other end of the room is the elevator and the shaft leading up to an office. But I don’t think I can climb back up the elevator cable again. In the room above me are my clothes, and getting back into them is my best chance of surviving. If I can get back up the air shaft.

  First I have to find the opening. I swim up until my outstretched hand touches the ceiling tile. Fortunately, I haven’t moved too far away from where I entered the room, and a few moments later I find the edge of the shaft opening. I swim into it and kick as hard as I can, which isn’t very hard at all. Still, I move up, and every inch brings me closer to air. I keep Ariadne’s face in my mind and keep going.

  When my head breaks the surface of the water, I gasp in air. My burning lungs expand, and the pounding in my head and chest calms. But I’m not safe yet. Far from it. I still have to get up the rest of the shaft and into the cellar. The longer I stay in the water, the harder it will be, so although it seems impossible, I set my back against the cold metal wall of the shaft, force my knees up until my feet are pressed against the other side, and slide upward one agonizing inch at a time.

  The entire time I’m working my way up the shaft, Ariadne is there in my head, urging me on. I never take my eyes from hers, and this is the only thing that keeps me going. Even then, there are a couple of times when I don’t think I can go any farther. That’s when her voice fills my head, telling me not to give up. For her, I don’t. For her, I keep going even though I can no longer feel anything in my fingers or toes.

  Then I’m at the end. It takes everything I have left to reach up and pull myself over the edge of the shaft and onto the floor. I crawl to the pile of my clothes and pull them on with fingers I can see now are torn and bloody from clawing at the walls of the air shaft. When I manage to get my coat on, I start to feel just the tiniest bit more alive. I have on clothes. I’ve survived. And I have a purpose.

  I stagger up the steps and through the halls of the museum. Outside, dawn is still some time away, and the world is gray and still. I find my way back to the car and try not to think about my brother’s body in the trunk as I get in and start the engine. I turn the heater up as high as it will go and wait for the air to warm up. When my hands are working well enough to operate the shifter, I put the car in gear and drive back to the apartment we’ve borrowed from Lottie’s acquaintance Anaïs—where, I hope, Lottie is still waiting.

  She is. When I come in, stumbling, she runs over and helps me into the bathroom.

  She starts the water flowing into the bathtub, then helps me take off my clothes, as my fingers still aren’t working quite right. When I’m down to just my boxer shorts, she helps me into the tub. I sink down until only my head is above the water, letting my frozen body thaw. Lottie perches on the toilet, watching me.

  “I’m not going to drown,” I promise her, trying to lighten the mood.

  “What happened?” she asks. “Where’s the girl?”

  “We found the weapon,” I say. “Well, parts of it. And some plans.”

  Her face brightens for a moment, and she opens her mouth to speak.

  “But there were complications. One complication, anyway. A big one.”

  I tell her everything: about Cassandra, and about my trip back down the air shaft into the flooded chamber. Her eyes widen with each new detail. When I’m done, she says, “So the weapon is lost. The Minoans have it.”

  “For now,” I say.

  “You’re going to go after them?”

  I nod. “That’s my plan.”

  “How will you even find them?” she asks. “And if you do, how will you get the weapon back? Once they have it, surely they’ll keep it protected.”

  “Of course they will,” I say. “As for finding them, I have some ideas.”

  Lottie shakes her head. “I hope you have a secret weapon.”

  I picture Ariadne. “I think I might,” I say.

  She sighs. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Never better.”

  She stands up. “I’ll go make something to eat, then.”

  She leaves, and I close my eyes. The truth is, I’m still cold. I feel like I’ll never truly be warm again. But I’m alive. The water feels great, but I know I can’t stay here long. There is a lot to be done, and with every second that passes, Ariadne and Cassandra are getting farther and farther away. I need to go after them, and soon.

  There’s a knock on the door. Lottie opens it and steps inside. She’s holding a small stack of folded clothes, which she sets on a chair. “Apparently, Anaïs has a gentleman friend,” she says. “I found these in one of the dressers.” She bends to retrieve my pile of wet things. “I’ll hang these up to dry.”

  I stay in the bathtub until the water begins to cool, then get out and dry myself with one of the towels. I dress in the clothes Lottie has found. They’re a little big for me, but they’re warm. When I’m dressed, I go out into the other room. Lottie is in the kitchen, stirring something in a pan on the stove.

  “There were tins of soup in the cupboard,” she says as she dips a spoon into the pot.

  “I’m starting to feel like Goldilocks,” I say as I take a seat at the table. “I wonder what Anaïs will think when she comes home and finds people have been sleeping in her bed, wearing the clothes in her dresser, and eating her food.”

  I take a bite of the soup. It’s made with beef, hearty and thick, and I eat half the bowl before I say another word. Lottie sits down across from me and waits. I can tell she’s anxious to hear why I’ve returned alone, but she doesn’t rush me. When I’m done, I push the bowl away. “We need to talk about what happens next,” I say. “Do you and Bernard have somewhere safe to go?”

  “Safe?” Lottie says. “Safe from whom?”

  “Too many people know about the weapon,” I remind her. I think about Jackson’s body lying in the trunk of the car. She can’t have forgotten what happened. “If someone thinks you know anything about where it is, they might try to harm you.”

  Lottie’s face hardens, and I know she’s now thinking about Jackson as well. “There are places where we will be safe,” she says stonily. “And where we can bury Jack
son.”

  “Where?”

  She looks like she doesn’t want to tell me. “In France,” she says.

  “I’ll need to know where you are,” I say. “In case I need your help.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” I admit. “Maybe nothing. But when this is over, I know my family would like to meet you and Bernard.”

  Lottie shakes her head. “I don’t think they would like that at all,” she says. “They will blame me.”

  I can’t tell if she really believes this or if she’s the one who doesn’t want anything to do with us. I don’t argue with her. There will be time for that later. Right now, we both need to get going. There’s one more thing I need to discuss with her first.

  “What can you tell me about Karl Ott?” I ask her.

  Lottie shrugs. “I’ve known him since we were children. Our fathers worked together.”

  I sense that this is something else she’s reluctant to talk about. But I need information, and so I press on. “What’s his real name?”

  She hesitates a moment before saying, “Tobias Falkenrath.”

  “Jackson said his father was imprisoned by the Allies.”

  “Yes,” Lottie says. “The Soviets.”

  “Could Ott be working with someone?”

  Lottie looks at me and wrinkles her brow. “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody tipped off the people who came and took you from the safe house,” I say.

  “It could have been any number of people,” Lottie replies tersely.

  “Yes, it could,” I say. But I have my doubts. I can’t help thinking about how Ott disappeared so quickly during the fight at the factory, and how determined he was to get the weapon.

  “Karl wouldn’t betray us,” Lottie says, as if the matter is settled. She stands up. “I need to get Bernard ready to leave.”

  I don’t argue with her. Now that I know Ott’s real name, I can find out more about him on my own. Still, I’m not happy having his whereabouts unknown. He’s a wild card, and I’d feel better if I knew what he was up to.

  While Lottie goes and wakes Bernard, I wash the dishes and put them away. When Lottie and Bernard are ready, I make one last trip through the apartment, making things look the way they did when we arrived. My clothes are still damp, and I don’t want to put them on and risk being cold again, so I’ll be borrowing Anaïs’s friend’s clothes permanently. Hopefully, she’ll just convince herself he took them, and won’t even know someone has been here. Not that it matters. Still, I’ve been trained not to leave any evidence behind, and it’s important to stay sharp.

  We leave the apartment and go down to the car. Before Lottie and Bernard get in, I give them each a hug. I also give Lottie some of the cash I took from the safe house. “This should be enough to get you to France,” I tell her.

  She tucks the money into the pocket of her coat, then hands me a piece of paper. “The address where we’ll be,” she says. Then she kisses me on each cheek. “Good luck, Sam.”

  She gets into the car, starts it, and drives away. I watch until she reaches the end of the street and disappears. Once she’s out of sight, I turn and start walking. I’ll be leaving Berlin myself shortly. First, though, I need to make a call.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ariadne

  The waters of the Aegean are choppy, as they often are in winter, and the caïque rocks a little as we make the crossing from Piraeus to Heraklion. But after more than 48 hours cooped up in a train compartment, it’s a pleasure to be out in the open air. I only wish my homecoming were under different circumstances.

  Manos Theodorakis is at the helm of the Amphitrite, and as we motor, he talks to me and Cassandra about the civil war that has been waging in Greece for the past four years.

  “I think we are nearing the end,” he says. “Now that Stalin has withdrawn support from Tito, the Communists will not be able to maintain their positions. Already they are calling for Vafiadis to be replaced. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Ianthe Pavlou, who is sitting at the small table in the cabin with me and Cassandra, takes one of the pieces of the weapon from the box that sits open in front of her, and inspects it. “If the rest of the country had fought the way Cretans did against the Germans, the war would have ended much sooner.”

  Ianthe is talking about the Battle of Crete, which occurred in the summer of 1941, when the Nazis sent paratroopers to invade the island in an attempt to secure it as a seaport. They were met with fierce resistance from the local population—most of whom are of the Minoan line—who defended their ancestral home and defeated the invaders. Cassandra and I were only 10, but we had already been training for several years, and we assisted the older fighters by acting as scouts and relaying information back and forth. Ianthe, who is older than we are by 15 years, killed a dozen soldiers herself, and has a thick scar running down the left side of her face as a reminder.

  She sets the piece in her hand back in the box and stands up. “I need a break,” she says. “Ari, want to come outside for a smoke?”

  I can tell that she wants to talk to me alone. I nod and follow her out of the cabin and onto the deck. Ianthe leans against the rail that runs along the side of the boat. She takes a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and taps one out. She offers it to me, but I shake my head. She puts the pack away, places the cigarette in her mouth, and cups her hand around it as she strikes a match and touches it to the tip. When it takes, she tosses the match into the sea and blows out a cloud of smoke.

  Even though it’s winter, the temperature is warm and the skies are blue. The change from Berlin is remarkable. I realize how much I’ve missed Greece after more than half a year away. I look out over the seemingly endless expanse of the sea. We’ve been motoring for only a few hours, so Crete is not yet visible, but I search the horizon for its familiar hills anyway. At the bow, dolphins break the surface, swimming alongside us, and it feels as if they’ve come to escort me home.

  I should be elated. The weapon is in our hands, and it could change everything about how Endgame is played. But the worry that began when I first saw my sister in the museum has slowly grown into a feeling of dread. During the train trip, Cassandra acted as if everything was fine, catching me up on the news from home. Never once did she ask about Boone, or for details about what occurred in Berlin. Rather than being comforting, this lack of questioning has only made me more wary. It’s as if she is trying too hard to make me feel at ease, which has had the opposite result. Equally distressing is that when I asked her why and how the council had decided to send her to assist me, she said only that she didn’t know their reasons, and that I would have to ask them myself.

  “How was the journey from Berlin?” Ianthe asks.

  “Uneventful,” I tell her.

  She laughs. “You mean boring,” she says. “I imagine it was, after everything.”

  She’s watching me. She knows something. I wonder how much. I decide I might as well find out. “What have you heard?”

  She takes a drag on her cigarette before replying. “Four dead,” she says.

  I nod. What is there to say to this? Again I wonder how everyone knows what happened, when I’ve made no report myself. But I don’t want to appear anxious, and so I say, “I hope what’s in that box is worth it. Can you tell anything?”

  Ianthe is a scientist, like Sauer. Her specialty is ancient civilizations. She shakes her head. “No,” she admits. “But there are items in our collection that might be of some assistance. Things we’ve found over the years. We’ll see.”

  She’s being evasive. I can tell by the way she turns away from me and pretends to be looking at something in the water. I don’t know if she really doesn’t know anything, or if for some reason she doesn’t trust me enough to tell me what she thinks. I stand beside her and look at the water too. It flashes in the sunlight, and the smell of salt and fish tangs the air around us.

  “There’s going to be an inquiry,” Ianthe says, h
er voice almost a whisper. She doesn’t look at me. “I thought you should know.”

  So that’s it. Now I know why Cassandra was sent to Berlin. Someone thinks I’ve done something wrong, made mistakes. That I’ve failed as the Player. I’m not surprised. It’s what I’ve been most afraid of. Having it confirmed doesn’t make me feel better, but at least now I know what’s waiting for me when we reach the island.

  There’s no point in asking Ianthe any questions. She’s most likely told me everything she knows. She’s not part of the council, and therefore not privy to their discussions. Probably she’s heard the rumor from someone else. She’s only told me now because of our friendship.

  Now she turns to me and smiles. “I wouldn’t worry,” she says. “It’s routine when there are deaths.”

  I nod. She’s right. However, the knot in my chest isn’t loosening. There’s something more going on. What it is, I won’t know until I’m standing before the council. I expect that will happen shortly after our arrival in Heraklion. They will want to talk to me while the details of the past week are fresh in my mind. Not that I’m likely to forget them.

  “If you two stare at that water much longer, Poseidon himself will rise up and claim you as his brides.”

  I turn to see Cassandra watching us. I wonder how long she’s been there, and if she’s somehow heard any of our conversation. I don’t think so. Now she comes and joins us at the railing. She’s right beside me, our shoulders touching.

  “Remember the time the trainers took us out on a boat to practice deep diving, and when we came up, the boat was gone?”

  “We had to swim twenty kilometers back to land,” I say. “In the dark. When I said I couldn’t swim any farther, you told me that if I didn’t keep going, a sea monster would reach up and drag me down to eat me.”