The Gambit

by Allen Longstreet

  I grabbed a toboggan lying on the bed and pulled it over my blond hair. I put on my sunglasses even though it was dark outside. Grey had left a scarf that I wrapped around my neck, and I zipped my jacket tight.

  “What has gotten into you?” Rachel threw her hands up.

  “Hunger,” I answered flatly. “You have to be hungry too.”

  “I am, but I can wait until Briana and Grey bring us something back. They were going to pick up stuff for our new disguises too, remember?”

  “I do. It’s been three hours. It shouldn’t take that long, and I’m tired of being cooped up in this hotel room anyway.”

  She was still in the bed. She hadn’t moved at all.

  “Are you coming or not?” I asked.

  She stared at me so intently, as if she was trying to speak to me through her mind. Her whole expression radiated defiance. Maybe she was trying to tell me without words, ‘This is your punishment for agreeing to Grey’s plan. I’m not going anywhere with you.’

  “Come on, babe…” I pouted softly. “I want to spend as much time with you as I can.”

  She exhaled sharply through her nose and bit her bottom lip. She turned away from me, but I could see her roll her eyes.

  “Okay, fine. You win.”

  She used her hair tie to wrap her hair up in a tight bun, and she dug around her backpack for the Dolphins cap. She borrowed one of Briana’s jackets. The weather was freezing compared to Florida.

  “Where do you have in mind?” she asked. “It’s not like we can just walk up in a restaurant and ask for a table for two.”

  I laughed. “No shit, I wish we could. I saw a hotdog stand around the block. It’s close, and it will hold us over until they get back.”

  “All right,” she obliged.

  Once our disguises were on, I walked to the door and peered out the peephole. No one was in the hall. I signaled to Rachel that the coast was clear. I opened the door and immediately headed for the exit, with Rachel at my heels. Briana and Grey checked us in again as Rose and Gregory. She lied, telling the front desk her sickly mother was with us, and we needed the ground floor. We needed the ground floor because it was a quick in and out. We didn’t have any elevator rides, and we had fewer chances of someone recognizing us. It was only fifteen feet before we walked out the exit door, and the chilly autumn air hit us. I made sure my scarf and toboggan covered the majority of my face, and Rachel was bundled up pretty well herself.

  The exit nearest to our room put us out on the back side of the hotel, almost in somewhat of an alleyway. There were no cars, just one wide sidewalk. I was glad. No cars meant fewer people that could potentially recognize us. We wrapped around to the real street, and I saw the hotdog stand a block away. A few people passed us, but none gave us a second glance. I was extremely happy we were blending in. I stopped and leaned in to nudge Rachel before we reached the stand.

  “How do you like your hotdogs?” I asked.

  “All the way,” she mumbled.

  “I could have made a really dirty joke with that answer,” I chuckled.

  She slapped the backside of my coat and revealed a small smile. I approached the hot dog stand. There was no one else in line.

  “What can I get you two?” the man asked.

  “Two hot dogs all the way, please.”

  “That will be 4.14, sir.”

  I pulled out my billfold and handed him a ten. He handed me the change, and Rachel grabbed the two hotdogs wrapped in foil.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The moment I turned around, I unwrapped it and devoured it in a matter of bites. The warm chili and chopped onions were perfect. It was sad to say, but that hotdog might have been the best meal I had in days, probably because I hadn’t eaten in so long.

  “Slow down there, cowboy,” Rachel giggled.

  My mouth was so full I couldn’t even answer.

  We passed more people in the street. I tried to keep my head down, but I had slid my scarf down so I could eat. We neared the alleyway we had come from, and I quickly turned down it. The back entrance door was made of all glass and well-lit. I saw many people walking through our hall. They were kids, actually. They all wore basketball uniforms. I saw many parents with the children, too. It was a commotion. A commotion that made it far too risky to go right back in our hotel room. We would have to wait until it cleared out.

  I stopped Rachel just a few feet shy of the entrance.

  “What?” she asked. I pointed through the door. She leaned over to glance in.

  “Oh. I see,” she said. I nodded. “We can just wait a few minutes out here,” I suggested. “You still have to finish your hotdog, anyway.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and took another bite. I shoved my hands in my pockets and just stared at the glass door, waiting for the crowd in the hallway to thin.

  Something was pulled over my head, and I couldn’t see. I heard Rachel’s hotdog splat on the ground. I was in a headlock, with a forearm pressing onto my face, covering my mouth. I could hear Rachel’s muffled screams as her mouth was covered too. I struggled to breathe. I fought and kicked, but just as quickly I was thrown chest-first onto the hood of a car. That same forearm was now pressed down into my back, to the point where I couldn’t even try to lift my body. It had to have been a man behind me. I could tell by the physical strength, but also, his body was pinned against mine. He was using every part of his body to keep me pushed against the car…and it definitely wasn’t the body of a female. My hands were pulled behind my back, and a moment later I felt fisherman’s rope being tied so tightly around my wrists I thought it would cut off the circulation. Rachel’s whimpers and cries continued, so I knew she was still with me. My heart pounded in my chest. Were we being arrested? What kind of cops would put a bag over the suspects’ heads? Two car doors popped open, and I was pushed inside. My body slammed into Rachel’s, but luckily we didn’t bump heads. I felt suffocated. Every breath I took felt struggled, and the air that filled the sack was already muggy and moist.

  The car was moving. I had no idea where we were going.

  “Did anyone see?” a male voice asked in a low tone.

  “No,” a female voice muttered.

  I was sitting in a chair with my arms wrapped around the back of it. I couldn’t tell where, but I knew Rachel was beside me. I could hear her breathing. The black material of the sack barely let in any light, and I still couldn’t see our kidnappers. I was angry, and my body was sore. The car ride was less than five minutes long. I tried to memorize which way we turned, like I had seen in some movies, but it didn’t work. I lost track of our direction. Too many lane changes, and too many turns. When we got out of the car, we were dragged down some steps. The only thing I could think of was a basement of some sorts. My imagination was running wild. The grimmest possibilities of what could happen to us bombarded my mind. Did some overly-patriotic serial killer kidnap us? Had they been stalking us since we arrived in Atlanta? Maybe they really did think we were terrorists and wanted to serve their own form of justice. I shuddered at the thought.

  The sack was pulled off of my head. I glanced to my left to see Rachel looking at me in fear. The smoothness of her face was replaced with hard lines and teary eyes. I had never seen her this frightened since I met her. I quickly whipped my head around to examine where we were being held for any clues of its location. The floor was wooden and worn. I remembered hearing its creakiness when we were brought in. The concrete walls were windowless. There was a row of twin beds along the back wall, a sofa with the leather peeling off, and an old TV in the corner. I heard voices and footsteps above us. I couldn’t help but assume we were underneath some backstreet bar. The whole room had a musty smell to it. I tugged at the ropes around my wrists, but they wouldn’t budge.

  “What do you want with us?” Rachel asked, her voice trembling.

  I turned to face forward, and I was finally able to see our kidnappers. The man faced away from us, and there looked to be some sort of cart
in front of him. The closest thing I could compare it to would be the cart a waitress delivers room service on. There was a laptop open atop it, and to the right of his body was a projector. The woman faced us. It looked like she was chewing on bubble gum, but in the dim lighting of the room, I couldn’t tell if it was that or her lip. She had black, voluminous hair that was put up in a complex-looking bun. There were long strands that hung by her ears and down to her shoulders. There was something different about her features, they weren’t like the typical American girl. She had high cheekbones, and her makeup was dark. She had a borderline gothic look.

  “Natasha,” the man said. “The lights, please.”

  I could have sworn I heard the faintest accent in the man’s voice. She hit the light switch, and the faint yellow lighting was replaced by the white glow of the projector. The man turned around to face us. He didn’t say a word, just glanced back and forth between me and Rachel. There was something oddly familiar about him, and it caused me to squint. His hair was jet black, just like Natasha’s, but his features were strong. His jawline was twice as manly as my own, and the look in his eyes just screamed that he had been angry for a very long time. Something told me I had seen his face before, but I couldn’t put my finger on where.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  In my peripheral, Rachel was shaking her head no. I had zoned out, still studying why his face looked so familiar to me. Suddenly, I realized he had asked us a question.

  “No,” I answered.

  He laughed and shook his head side to side. He snorted, exhaling out of his nose as he continued to chuckle.

  “Good,” he said flatly. “See Natasha, your disguises have worked very well.”

  She winked at him and gave him a nod. I couldn’t help but notice that incredibly faint accent every time he spoke.

  “So, you don’t recognize me at all?” he asked us again.

  “You look very familiar,” I blurted.

  “Aha,” he said, and began to clap slowly. “Bravo, Owen.”

  I was about to ask him how he knew my name. Then, I realized how stupid that question was. Everyone knew me.

  “Did either one of you happen to see the billboard when you came into downtown?”

  My stomach flopped. There was no way this was who I thought it was.

  “Yes,” Rachel mumbled. “We all did.”

  “What did it say?” he pressed. His tone became tenser. It was like he was trying to coax us into saying what he already knew.

  “With one lie our freedom dies,” I repeated the dripping red words that were on the billboard earlier today. The man revealed a twisted smile.

  “With one lie our freedom dies. All it took was one lie to send this country spiraling down into an oblivion so abysmal we would never be able to escape it.”

  “What…what are you talking about?” Rachel asked with her breath catching.

  He huffed, rolling his eyes. “You two know exactly what I’m talking about. You are fucking living it!” he shouted and walked over to me. He leaned over and propped his hands on his knees. His face was a mere foot away from mine. “The lie they created about you, Owen, was like giving oxygen to a dying flame. Now, they have a raging fire, one that will consume this whole country!”

  “You know I was framed?” I muttered, with my mouth agape.

  “Of course I do!” he shouted, his accent thickening with every word. “I know because I was framed, too!”

  I felt the blood leave my face. I stared into his dark eyes, and his lower lip quivered.

  “You’ve been on the run for a week and a half. Try two years.”

  “Viktor…” The words slid out of my mouth like I was in a trance. I saw Rachel’s brown locks swing in my peripheral as she whipped her head around.

  “Viktor? Are you really?” Rachel questioned. I could hear the panic in her voice.

  “Yes,” he glanced between us. “Viktor Ivankov.”

  Then, it hit me. I was sitting in front of the most elusive man the country had ever tried to catch. I struggled to loosen the ropes around my wrists, and my eyes darted around the room for an exit. Viktor and Natasha hadn’t killed us, so why were we still alive? What did they want? My logical mind was trying to figure it out. How did they find us? Were they watching us from the moment we got in Atlanta? So many questions. The most important of which, spawned from Viktor’s statement. He had been framed also.

  Now that I knew who he was, his identity was more recognizable in his features. The face I had seen on the news for so many months. Viktor Ivankov in the flesh—right in front of me.

  “Why did you kidnap us like this?” Rachel croaked. Her face was still contorted with glistening eyes.

  “Because,” he began, turning back around to the laptop. “I needed to show Owen something.”

  My forehead creased. “And this is how you had to bring us here?” I shouted, and shook the wooden chair by pulling at the ropes.

  “I had no choice,” he replied. “It’s not like you two would have willingly hopped in the car with a terrorist and a stranger. We saw you in traffic and followed you the rest of the day. You deserve to know the truth.”

  The words pierced my mind with such clarity it was indescribable.

  The truth. My heart sped up just from the thought. I turned left to see Rachel staring at me with the same expression. She knew just as well as I did, those two words meant more to our struggle than anything else. The truth meant Rachel had a story to write. If Ian published the story, we might be able to save the election in time.

  “Natasha, untie them, please.”

  Without missing a beat, she walked over to us and knelt behind our chairs. After a few moments, I felt the ropes slide off my wrists. It immediately alleviated so much discomfort. I stretched my arms out, and I heard Viktor doing something on the laptop. He held out a remote, and an image projected onto the wall. He stood away from the projector so we could see. The image was in black and white, but there was something peculiar about it. It looked like a gigantic rectangle, filled with other items. In the corner, there was a timestamp.

  09:54 – 01/02/2015

  Viktor began clicking the remote and flipping through more images. It looked as if it were an x-ray. I noticed the timestamps became later and later in the day.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked, crossing his arms. Rachel stayed quiet. Then, the realization of what it was hit me.

  “It’s a shipping container…” I mumbled.

  He snorted and grimaced.

  “Bingo!” he shouted, and gave us an unenthused, slow clap.

  “How…how did you get those images?” Rachel asked, her voice detached.

  “Ten years…” He growled. “Ten years I worked there before this shit happened. So, before the New Year, I noticed something I had never seen before. I saw my bosses walking around with a few people dressed differently than our inspectors normally would. They wore suits and asked our employees questions. They talked to me, asking me questions about my position and how long I had been there.”

  My pulse quickened with every word. I was getting to hear what really happened at the Port of New York before the Wall Street dirty bomb.

  “I found it odd that I had never been asked these things before. I had a feeling something wasn’t right. Our inspectors usually didn’t come until the end of the first quarter, and these people were different. They gave me a bad vibe. So, I began copying the daily archive of everything I x-rayed onto this jump drive. Although, I came to find out they didn’t know this. It wasn’t until after I was framed when they conducted the fake investigation, that they realized what I had done. That was why they wanted to find me so badly. They knew I had proof that I had nothing to do with the bombs.”

  “Why didn’t you put the proof on the internet or something?” I interjected.

  He glared at me. “Don’t you think I’ve already thought of that? Owen, you know just as well as I do, if I were to leak those images, they woul
d be wiped clean off of the internet in an instant. It would be immediately labeled as a conspiracy. We are two people, and they have an entire army against us.”

  I nodded, looking down at the floor. He was right.

  “Were you two in the Confinement?”

  “Yes,” Rachel answered. I said the same.

  “I wasn’t,” he said. “I was outside of the boundaries. There was rumor around town that the National Guard said it wouldn’t be long until everyone was rounded up and put into Camps. Natasha intercepted emails from two higher-ups in Washington while we were passing through, trying to get information. Within those emails, it stated that the Supreme Court had sabotaged their plan, and in order to revive it they had to do something new.”

  “We were never meant to get out…” I mumbled. The statement I made to Cole that fateful day in the bunkers during the Confinement was right.

  “Correct,” Viktor said. “The Confinement was the first step towards a totalitarian regime. Then, you and Mr. Pavich came along and screwed things up for them even further. The Convergence Party. I have to admit, I admired what you two did. I still do to this day, and when your party took the polls by a landslide, it immediately put a massive target on both of your backs. It was just a matter of time. You were the target they chose in order to revive their plan. They framed you so that they wouldn’t lose their power.”

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  “The images in my jump drive prove two things. One—that I had nothing to do with the Wall Street dirty bomb, and two—that the radioactive material used to create the bomb came from right here. They just involved Russia because I am Russian. When in actuality, they created the bomb. It was made on American soil.”

  Viktor aimed the remote toward the projector. An image appeared. Anger flooded my body.

  “Do you know who—”

  “Alexei Malchikov,” I interjected. Saying the name made me cringe.

  “Alexei Malchikov…” Viktor repeated. “He was innocent, like you. His family owned massive textile plants all over the US, and they owed the IRS tens of millions of dollars. They were funneling most of their money into a Swiss bank account. Alexei made a deal with them in order to give his family amnesty. He knew it could possibly cost him his life, but he did it anyway. The media didn’t mention anything about his family background, though. It was all orchestrated by the same people.”