by James Frey
“And it might have,” Cassandra says. “Who knows?” She laughs. “Speaking of sea monsters, I bet Theia Astraea is making kalamarakia krasata for your welcome-home dinner.”
Again, my sister’s cheerfulness is unnerving. If she knew that the council was unhappy with me, she would normally not miss the opportunity to make me feel bad about their displeasure. Acting as if this is an ordinary return from a successful mission is not normal. I catch Ianthe’s eye for a moment. The look on her face is one of pity, which worries me as much as Cassandra’s behavior.
“I’m going to sit in the bow for a while,” I say. “I’m a little tired.”
I feel Ianthe and Cassandra watching my back as I walk away. Will they talk about me? It annoys me that I’m now suspicious, that I’m letting the fact that the council is holding an inquiry bother me. It’s not unexpected, but Ianthe’s warning has made me uneasy.
When I reach the bow, I settle into a nest of fishing nets, curling up with my head resting on a buoy. I stare up at the sky, watching the clouds move slowly across the blue expanse like sheep on a hillside. The sun warms my face and makes me drowsy, and soon, despite my worries, I fall asleep.
I dream about Boone.
I’m in the flooded underground chamber. I’ve gone there to try to rescue him. It’s dark and cold, and the water is filled with debris: papers and pieces of things that were hidden behind the cabinet doors before the grenade explosion ripped them open. I swim through the room, feeling my way with my hands. I touch a body, but it’s not Boone. It’s Sauer. His dead eyes stare at me, his mouth open and his tongue swollen from the poison he took. I push away from him and turn. Boone is behind me. When I see him, I’m filled with joy.
Then I realize that he’s dead too. His body hangs in the water, his limbs limp as a marionette’s. His eyes are closed. I reach out for him, and his eyes blink open. They’re white, as if they’ve frozen. His hands grasp my wrists, the bloated fingers like manacles of ice. I fight him, but he doesn’t let go. I scream, and the air in my lungs bubbles out. I try to breathe, but there’s only water. It fills my mouth, and I choke. Boone opens his mouth, and even underwater I can hear him laugh as he watches me drown.
I’m awakened by the bumping of the caïque against a dock. For a moment I’m confused about where I am. Then I remember, and I realize that we’ve arrived. We’re on Crete. Home. I climb out of my makeshift bed, stretch to rid myself of the lingering bad feelings from my dream, and try not to think about whether what I saw was prophetic or just a nightmare. I very much hope Boone is still alive, but I can’t think about him at the moment.
I go and help Ianthe and Cassandra moor the boat, tying the bow and stern lines to the cleats anchored on the dock. Once the caïque is secured, Ianthe gathers up the box with the pieces of the weapon in it and we begin the walk to my parents’ house. When we’re halfway there, Ianthe and Manos break off to go their own ways. I hate to see the box leave my sight, but I know that it’s safe with Ianthe, and it’s one less thing I have to worry about. For the moment, anyway.
Cassandra and I don’t talk, but she hums a tune as we walk. It takes me a moment to place the song. It’s one we made up when we were children, about a girl who goes into the forest to find and kill a monster.
“You’re singing the hunting song,” I say.
“Am I?” she says. “That’s odd. I haven’t thought about that in years.”
She sounds happy, as if she’s the one coming home with a trophy. Which I suppose she is. But is it the box, or is it me?
When we reach our home, she lets me go in first. I take only a few steps inside before my mother appears and takes me in her arms, smothering my face with kisses. My father is next, and the two of them hug me so tightly I feel like an olive being pressed for its oil. When they finally let me go, my mother stands and looks me up and down.
“You’ve lost too much weight,” she declares.
“It’s because I didn’t have your moussaka and keftedes to make me fat,” I tell her.
“You’re in luck,” my father says. “She and your theia have made enough of both to feed the entire Greek army.”
I follow my mother into the kitchen, where my aunt is standing by the stove. Like me and Cassandra, my mother and her sister are twins. Astraea opens her arms and I endure the hugging and kissing all over again. As soon as she’s done greeting me, though, my aunt hands me a wooden spoon and says, “Don’t let the meatballs burn.”
It feels good to be tossed right back into normal life. Nobody asks me about Berlin. Nobody talks about Endgame. We cook while my mother and aunt bicker over the best way to season the lamb. We drink glasses of sweet white wine. It all feels familiar and welcome, and it takes me a while to realize that there really is enough food for a large group.
“Who is all this for?” I ask.
As if in answer, there’s a knock on the front door. My father disappears, and when he comes back, he’s accompanied by five people: Effie Kakos, Nemo Stathakis, Ursula Tassi, Xenia Papadaki, and Venedict Economides. Individually, they are my third-year mathematics teacher, a bookseller, one of my trainers, the great-grandmother of my best friend, and the priest at the Agios Minas Cathedral. Collectively, they are the Minoan council.
“Welcome home, Player,” Xenia Papadaki says as she embraces me and kisses me on both cheeks.
The others are more formal, shaking my hand. I notice that they greet Cassandra in a similar manner. Perhaps it is my imagination, but it seems they might be even more enthusiastic in their congratulations to her, as if she is responsible for bringing them the weapon. Or maybe, I think, they’re congratulating her on returning her wayward sister to them.
I try not to think about it too much as my father shepherds us to the table, where we sit. Cassandra and I are seated across from each other, and throughout dinner I occasionally look at her to see if she shows any indication of this being her victory celebration and not mine. Each time, she returns my look and lifts her glass of wine in salute. I have several glasses as well, and this does much to ease my tension.
The food is delicious. The conversation alternates between politics, local gossip, and the coming new year. Again, nobody asks me about my mission. We eat for several hours. Then the table is cleared and plates of bougatsa and loukoumades are brought out along with small cups of dark, rich coffee. Only then does Effie Kakos, who as the senior member of the council is sitting at the head of the table, say, “Now, Ariadne, let us talk about this Samuel Boone.”
CHAPTER 4
Boone
Like Berlin, Budapest is recovering from the war very slowly. Over a period of 50 days at the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the city was virtually destroyed by fighting between the German and Soviet armies. Its buildings still lie in ruins, and its people walk through the city like ghosts haunting what I can tell was once a beautiful place. And, despite the devastation, it’s still beautiful. They’re rebuilding, and one day I want to come back and see it the way it should look, when the scars are healed.
Even now there are signs that the city and its people are coming back to life. The new year is two days away, and that always makes people hopeful. In my family, we each make a list of things we want to happen or to do in the new year. We put the list away, then take it out again on New Year’s Eve and see how much of it has been achieved. My list from last year is tucked away in a drawer of my dresser back home. My list for the current year is sitting in front of me on the table in the café where I’m sitting, waiting for the person I’ve come here to meet.
I look at what I’ve written so far.
Find Ariadne
Get the box
Learn Spanish
Finish reading Moby-Dick
The last item has been on my list every year for the past five years, ever since my father told me I should read it because it’s the greatest American novel ever written. I hate not finishing things, so I keep putting it there hoping it will give me the incentive I need to get th
rough Melville’s doorstop of a book. But in all this time, I’ve only made it through the first 100 pages, so I suspect it will be there again in 1949. I don’t know how the guy found so much to say about whales.
As for the first two things on my list, I don’t know yet how I’m going to get them done, but I’m determined to do it. Only now, looking at my handwriting on the scrap of paper, do I realize that I’ve put finding Ariadne first. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe not. The longer I’m apart from her, the more worried I get that I’ll never see her again. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and it’s making me more than a little anxious that perhaps I’m letting my emotions get in the way of what should be my primary concern—retrieving the weapon and taking it home. In order to get the box, I need to find her, so it’s all tied together. But what if it wasn’t? What if I had to choose one thing over the other? Would I look for her first, or the box?
“It’s a little late for writing your Christmas list for Santa, isn’t it?”
A man pulls out the chair across from me and sits down. I quickly pick up the piece of paper, fold it, and stick it in the pocket of my coat. “Yeah, well, I never get that BB gun I ask for anyway,” I say.
The man is older than I am, probably in his forties. He’s tall and thin, with an angular face, dark eyes, and close-cropped black hair. His name—at least the one I’ve been given—is Charles Kenney.
“Your journey here was uneventful, I assume,” Kenney says.
I know what he’s asking. He wants to know if I think I was followed. “Pretty boring,” I tell him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier,” he replies. “I had business to attend to elsewhere.”
It’s been three days since I contacted my line back in America via shortwave radio. Using Morse code, I let them know that I’d located the item I was searching for, but that it had been lost again. I didn’t tell them how. I said I could get it back, though. They responded by telling me to go to Budapest and meet the man who is now looking at me intently from across the table. I assume he’s Cahokian, but I’ve never heard of him, and don’t know who he is or what he does, so I wait for him to tell me.
“We’ve met before,” he says. “Although you wouldn’t remember it. You were only four years old, and it was only for a few minutes. I was one of the people who evaluated your brother to determine his potential as a Player. I left America soon after, and have been living in various places in Europe ever since. I’m sorry about what happened to Jackson.”
I wonder if he’s referring to the story we were all told—that Jackson died in the war—or if he knows about the incident in Berlin. I don’t know what, if anything, I should say about that. Or about so many other things. Kenney is connected to my line, so I should tell him everything. Instead I find myself keeping secrets.
“Sauer is dead,” I say, deciding to avoid the topic of my brother altogether for now. “He committed suicide in the room where the box was hidden, after triggering a booby trap designed to kill anyone in the room. He didn’t want us to have it.”
“Us?” Kenney says.
“The Cahokians,” I say, quickly catching my mistake. I can’t mention Ariadne or the Minoans to him.
“Ah,” he says, nodding, as if maybe I meant something else. “I see. And did he say why?”
“He said it was too dangerous for anyone to have.”
“And yet he never destroyed it himself,” Kenney says. “Don’t you find that interesting?”
I suddenly feel as if I’m being tested. I don’t like it. “It was the most important thing he ever worked on,” I answer. “He probably couldn’t bring himself to do it.”
“Possibly,” Kenney agrees, although he sounds doubtful. “Or perhaps he was keeping it safe for someone else, and feared that if we took possession of it, the other party would never get it back.”
“Could be,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter now, though, does it?” says Kenney. “So, you recovered the box, but then it was taken from you. Is that correct?”
This is the part I’ve been dreading the most. “Yes,” I say. “I almost died getting the box and escaping from the flooded chamber for the second time. When I came out, there were people there. I was exhausted and injured. I couldn’t fight them. There were too many. I figured staying alive was the priority, and I could always retrieve the weapon later.”
Kenney is looking at me, his eyes locked on my face. I meet his gaze, knowing that he’s searching for any indication that I might be lying. I hope that he takes any sign of nervousness as me being embarrassed at having failed as a Player. That would be a natural reaction for anyone in my position.
“Understandable,” he says after a long moment. “And you say you know who these people are?”
I nod. This next part will be tricky. I have to play my role perfectly, or everything will fall apart. “The leader is a man named Karl Ott,” I say. Even though I know this is not Ott’s real name, I don’t share this information, as I may be able to use that “new” information later to buy me more time if I need it. “He’s the son of a scientist who worked with the Nazis. Sauer told me that Ott had been pressuring him for a long time to give him the weapon. He’s part of a group of people who want revenge for what was done to the Nazis by the Allies.”
“Sauer told you this?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder why he would share that information if he didn’t trust you to have the weapon yourself.”
“Maybe to convince me that he really didn’t think anyone should have it,” I say. “To gain my trust and lure me into the room so he could kill me.”
“There are easier ways to kill someone,” Kenney says. “Why reveal the location of the hidden room and kill himself in the process?”
These are all legitimate questions, and I try not to let it bother me that Kenney is asking them. They’re things any trainer or Player would wonder about. I keep my voice neutral as I say, “I think he was tired of keeping the secret.” Like the one the council kept about my brother, I think, wondering again how much Kenney knows about that.
“Where do you think Ott has taken the weapon?” he asks.
I’ve given a lot of thought to how to answer this question, which I of course knew was coming. As far as my council is concerned, getting the weapon is the primary—the only—mission now. They don’t know that the Minoans are involved, and they especially don’t know that finding Ariadne is just as important to me.
“The Soviet Union,” I tell him.
One of Kenney’s eyebrows lifts. “Really?”
“Ott’s father is in prison there,” I explain. “I think he’s going to try to get him out.”
“Did his father work on the weapon with Sauer?”
“Possibly,” I say, although I don’t think this is true. As far as I know, only Lottie’s father, Oswald Brecht, knows as much about the weapon as Sauer did.
“And so you want permission to go to the Soviet Union in search of Karl Ott, who you think has the weapon with him.”
“I know it sounds like a wild-goose chase,” I say. “The Soviet Union is a big place, and Ott might have taken the weapon somewhere else. But it’s the best chance we’ve got to retrieve the weapon. Give me a week to see what I can find out. If I haven’t gotten the weapon back by then, we’ll go to plan B.”
“Which is?”
I grin, hoping it comes across as confidence. “There is no plan B, so plan A has to work.”
Kenney leans back and sighs. “This is not a good plan,” he says flatly.
I worry that he’s going to say no, and order me to return home. If he does, I don’t know what I’ll do. I hold my breath as he thinks. I can see the wheels of his mind turning, examining the various risks and potential rewards.
“You speak Russian?” he asks.
“Well enough.”
“The Soviets are not fond of Americans,” he says. “If you’re caught and they think you’re spying for the United States, we can’t
help you. Once you enter the Soviet Union, you’re on your own.”
“I understand,” I tell him.
He nods. “All right. I’ll get you money and an identity. It will take you a few days to travel there. Train is easiest. I don’t like that this Ott fellow has a head start on you, so you’ll need to leave as soon as possible.”
If Ott really had the weapon, Kenney would be right. But Ott doesn’t have it. Also, I’m not going to the Soviet Union, at least not right away. It’s important that he think that’s where I’m heading, though, so I say, “I’ve already looked at the schedules. There’s a train leaving tonight that will get me as far as Minsk.”
Kenney stands up. “Meet me back here in two hours,” he says.
He leaves. I stay at the table for a little longer, finishing my coffee and thinking about my real plan. I have indeed looked into train schedules, but not to Moscow. I’m going to Athens. With a little bit of luck, I can be there in about 24 hours. What happens after that, I’m not sure. I assume that the Minoans will be concentrated in Crete, as that’s where the line comes from. But I could be wrong. Even if I’m not, finding Ariadne won’t be as simple as just asking around to see if anyone knows her.
There’s also the possibility that she doesn’t want me to find her. I try not to think about this too much. And I really don’t think it’s true. Still, lurking in the dark places of my mind is the fear that maybe she really was just using me to get the weapon. I still need to go to Greece to look for the weapon, so I try to convince myself that whether she wants me there or not doesn’t matter. It does, though.
I finish my coffee and leave the café. For the next two hours, I walk around the city, thinking about how lucky I am that although the United States was drawn into the war and suffered casualties, our country was largely untouched in the way so much of Europe has been. Apart from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and isolated incidents of submarines launching minor mortar attacks on the West Coast, no enemy bombs touched US soil. Our cities weren’t reduced to rubble. Our bridges and roads weren’t destroyed. While we were all afraid of what might happen, our reality was nothing compared to what the people in places like Budapest must have endured.