“That sounded electric,” Frank said, moving quickly in near Andy once again.
“What the hell...” Andy set the brass jacket down on his worktable and held up what he had found inside.
Where the lead should have been was a tiny, thin and partially cracked cylinder made of what looked like ceramic. A liquid with the consistency of spit slowly dripped down from within. There was a sudden and powerful acrid smell in the garage, like burning plastic, then an abrupt popping sound. Andy dropped the entire thing and began to flick his left hand about and suck in air through his teeth.
“What? Did you burn yourself?”
“That tip cracked it open. It did something. It flashed blue inside the jacket. I saw it,” said Andy, leaning back.
“It was electric. That tip was a circuit of some sort,” Frank said, bewildered.
“That watery shit and electricity. Not safe, man. I got some of it on me. It feels weird,” Andy held his hand out to Frank and pointing just above his thumb. Whatever liquid might have been there was gone now. It had absorbed right in, or evaporated away like rubbing alcohol.
“It shocked you,” Frank said.
“It did somethin’,” Andy said, looking spitefully at where the bullet lay on the worktable. The liquid that was inside of the ceramic cylinder had completely disappeared.
“Say that electric bit and the liquid hit you hard, right on your heart...”
“Well that would suck.”
“And you were old. Say you were old and that thing slammed into your chest. You only got a part of it, but say the whole thing hit you full on in the chest.”
“That wouldn’t be good at all.”
“It might even kill you.”
“Might,” said Andy, nodding.
“Excuse me Andy, I have to make a phone call,” Frank said as he dashed out of the garage.
Frank picked up his phone and dialed the UCSD Hospital triage ward. He tapped his hand repeatedly upon his sticky counter as the phone rang.
“This is triage. How can I direct your call?”
“I need Dr. Walcott, please.”
“One moment.”
Frank tapped and paced.
“May I ask who is calling, please?”
“This is Frank. He’ll know.”
“One moment.”
Frank thought about Andy Billings in his garage, waiting by his bullet machine with his goggles on. What a strange man. Perhaps he was thinking the same thing about his loner neighbor Frank.
“He’s not available at the moment.”
“The hell he’s not, ma’am. If you wouldn’t mind telling him that I’m dropping everything unless he gets on the phone right now.”
“Pardon?”
“Say just that. Say Frank is dropping everything unless you get on the phone. Please. Thank you.”
There was a pause in which Frank heard a muffled scratching on the other end, and then a longer pause in which Frank thought he might have been hung up on, before someone spoke. His voice was a harsh whisper.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you maniac?”
“Dr. Walcott. I know what happened. The bullet diffuses something into whomever it hits. It shuts them down.”
“Have you lost your mind, calling me like this?” hissed Walcott.
“And now I’m telling you that I’m done. I don’t know who you think I am, but you should know that I’m a nobody. A nobody. Understand? I’m on the verge of getting fired from a desk job at an insurance agency. A job that I hate, but am terrified to lose. I can’t do anything for you about any new weapon technology. Bottom line. I’m out.”
“You are a fool,” said Walcott with a genuine sadness that disturbed Frank.
“This organization that’s after you, that you say killed Bill Beauchamp, I want nothing of it.”
“They aren’t hunting me, Frank. They need me. You are the one that’s expendable. And they’ve already found you.”
“What?”
“No doubt they’re listening. Say hello.”
Frank was silent.
“Why did you call me? I thought I made it clear, but it’s too late now. It’s over for you, friend,” he said, heartbreak in his tone. Then Dr. Walcott hung up.
Chapter Fifteen
THERE WAS LESS THAN an hour left on the pagers. Every team had cleared the physicals, and every team had been personally checked in by the global couriers. All that remained was to watch and wait as each minute ticked down.
Blue was holed up in a hotel off of Pacific Highway in San Diego. Johnnie Northern reasoned that should anything happen immediately following the draw, they were on the coast, not far from San Diego International Airport, and they could move. With fifteen minutes to go Northern was kicking back on a sofa bed, idly flipping through channels on the TV embedded in the dresser. He was conversing lightly with the sallow Max Haulden, who was having a good deal more difficulty hiding his nerves. Max lay ramrod straight on one of the two twin beds, his eyes wide.
On the sofa to Northern’s right sat Nikkie Hix. She pulled her pajamas tight around her legs and closed her eyes. Her stomach always hurt during the hours before the draw, although she would never admit it to her teammates. She didn’t know that both of them already knew.
Across the pond, Alex Auldborne was at a dinner party hosted by a recent appointee to the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice who had clerked for his mother. Auldborne pondered, briefly, awaiting Grey’s draw at a more secluded and intimate venue, but then thought better of it. Here was much more interesting. There were simply too many wealthy and powerful people to talk to; too many rich interactions to watch and take part in.
Many in the room noted that Auldborne spoke most often to a small, porcelain beauty in one corner. This woman sipped upon a gin and tonic, never once acknowledged advances from anyone other than Auldborne, and never smiled.
While it looked to everyone else like Christina Stoke was having a miserable time, Auldborne knew better. He knew that Stoke loved rejecting men far more than she enjoyed being with them. His theory was that she derived more pleasure from embarrassing a man than she could derive from sleeping with him. To her, pleasure was power, and power was dominance.
Both Auldborne and Stoke kept their pagers in the breast pocket of their jackets—as did Draden Tate, their hulking striker, who had taken one look at the guests, decided against the party, and was pacing the perimeter of the gardens in the dark. All three awaited the buzz that would notify them of their first-round matchup.
The Irish of Team Green sat around a table, eating with Pyper Hurley’s father, Daniel. Bailey, Pyper’s little sister, ran around the dining table and darted this way and that, too excited at the sight of Kayla and Ian back once again to sit still. She gave both of them crayon drawings as welcome gifts. Kayla’s depicted her and Bailey and Daniel in a forest of Christmas trees. Kayla was distinguished by short and spiky brown hair and a huge smile, Daniel Hurley by his distinctive squat, boxy frame, and Bailey, as always, had a large green bow on top of her head. Her real green ribbon clip, one of her mother’s final gifts and without which she couldn’t live, sat securely upon the crown of her small head.
Ian’s picture was in the same vein as almost every one he had ever received from Bailey. It was of him and Bailey holding hands inside of a heart, surrounded by other hearts of various colors. Bailey really liked Ian.
As the four adults ate they talked about everything except the Tournament. Pyper’s father and sister knew nothing of it and Pyper had made it clear that they were to stay in the dark. Instead they spoke comfortably of the weather and the work week. As the pagers ticked down, Ian became antsy and excused himself for his third cigarette of the meal.
Team Black sat in the dark. For them, the draw would come at three in the morning. They situated themselves in a small bungalow in northern Russia in the middle of which sat a freestanding fireplace with a tarnished brass chimney. The fire in it burned to white coal, and fr
om there slowly receded so only its pinkish core remained.
Ales Radomir, the silent and bespectacled sweeper, was sleeping on top of many cushions spread about the corner nearest the door. His small, round glasses sat in the exact center of a chair that he brought over to where he lay. Without them on, and in the low light, his face looked smooth and round and devoid of all emotion, like a clay model awaiting an artist. He made no sound at all as he slept.
Goran Brander, the towering striker, had fallen asleep in an old scratched leather lounger near the window on the right wall of the room. His long legs sprawled outward and his head sank into his broad shoulders. His arms hung to either side of the chair, his fingertips brushing the ground.
Eddie Mazaryk watched the heat waves radiate outward from the copper chimney-tube before him. The metal was so hot that in places it had been discolored to a dark rainbow of purples, like iridescent drops of oil. It was a beautiful color and it seemed to shift and expand as if alive. Ales had touched the copper the last time they were all here, almost a year and a half ago, even though he knew how hot it was. It had seared the fingerprint off his right pointer finger after only a few seconds. He hadn’t made a sound.
Mazaryk’s gaze was fixed but his mind was elsewhere. He debated which team would move first once the draw was in and the matchups set. After the draw the Tournament would be open and any team could move as they wished. Some teams preferred to wait for the fight to come to them while others brought the fight to their opponents. Those that moved and those that waited had remained more or less consistent over the years. Whether a captain chose to await the fight or to go to it depended upon a number of factors, both personal and professional, but it was not a decision to be taken lightly. A brash move could get an entire team killed very quickly.
Patient observation had won his team the past two Tournaments in a row. Since their debut, they had never lost. Black was well on the way to achieving a legacy. Mazaryk and his teammates had crafted a plan of attack for every team based largely upon psychological profiles. Black had a thick file on every captain, striker and sweeper for all eight teams across the world. These profiles were begun years ago and continuously updated, but they were far from complete. Players changed, sometimes in ways that Mazaryk doubted they noticed themselves. Remaining abreast required strict vigilance. Of particular interest to Mazaryk was Team Blue.
The Tournament was changing. Insidious vendettas between teams were beginning to warp the system. Johnnie Northern and Blue were becoming flashpoints. Sometimes they fought with an almost archaic genteel like infantry in the wars of centuries past. Other times they lashed out with disturbing cruelty. The English of Grey had learned this fact painfully last time. Blue coined an entirely new phrase in Tournament vernacular as a result: The Bludgeon Blackout. The English had been humiliated. Auldborne was not quick to forget an affront, to say the least. He was one of the most proud.
Furthermore, Northern was increasingly unconcerned with maintaining the secrecy that they had all been sworn to upon their commissioning, nor was he unique in this. Admittedly, keeping the Tournament secret was difficult, but the United States was the worst of all places for its existence to become known. Americans in general had no tact; it seemed every one of them felt entitled to know everything and to tell everything, and took even the slightest suggestion to the contrary as a violation of their “rights”. It never occurred to any American Mazaryk had ever known that certain knowledge might hurt them, or that they might be happier kept in the dark about certain things. The entire nation gossiped like adolescent children. If the story broke in the United States, rumors and half-truths would spread like a virus. It would only make all of their jobs more difficult.
Mazaryk looked from where Ales slept as if dead over to where Brander slept in a bundle, like a massive child. If a stranger were to walk in that dark room he would have no idea who they were, or of what each could do. And yet combined they were even more: They were his arms and he was their head. In the dark and in the waning heat he was, for a moment, moved by their loyalty. He took it for granted. But then again, in order to survive in this game their loyalty and their ability to function as one unit had to be such that he was able to take it for granted.
Thousands of miles away, a deceptively calm Greer Nichols prepared before his arc of hollow eyed cameras. The curved wooden desk in his enormous office had been removed, and in its place stood a slightly elevated platform. It was on this that he stood, dressed in a fitted, crème colored suit that seemed molded to his broad shoulders and long arms. His rounded, bald head gleamed black, and his brown eyes glittered from within like pennies dunked in syrup. His nostrils flared slightly with each controlled breath. He brushed one hand over his gleaming head and nodded once at his long-time assistant, a quiet young man named Bernard.
At the press of a button the soft green light under the cameras turned red.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the fifth draw of our Tournament. My name is Greer Nichols. Many of you know me. More of you do not. I am a recruiter for Team Blue. According to custom, and in adherence to the rotation, the honor of Master of Ceremonies has fallen upon my shoulders this time around—an honor that I gladly accept.”
The lenses glinted and shifted to focus as his signal was securely broadcast to a select mass of individuals scattered across the globe. It was unsettling to be the only living thing in his office save his Bernard and yet to be seen by countless unknown eyes. Aside from Greer himself, the only other noticeable object in the shot’s frame was a large digital countdown display suspended at the top of a black data board behind him.
“Every one of you joining me tonight is either part of the recruitment wing of a team, or is prepared to make a wager on the Tournament to come. As you know, as soon as the draw is finished our systems stand ready to receive wagers of any type: personal, professional, monetary or otherwise. Anything and everything can be settled here. Once entered, all wagers are documented and final. There are absolutely no exceptions. As always, no member of any team will ever become aware of any wager made on their performance in this or any subsequent Tournament round. If any of the three members of a team should discover the wagers placed upon them, that team will be dismissed not only from this round, but from the entire Tournament and all subsequent Tournaments. Ours is to anonymously enjoy, theirs is to act unbeknownst to all. This is the way it has always been.”
With a practiced poise, Greer stepped to the side of his dais and turned his gaze up and behind him to the clock, now in its final minute. In absolute silence, Greer along with untold others watched the seconds blink away.
Three seconds... two... one...
And in the impossibly long pause between the darkening of the clock and the brightening of the draw board, everything was decided. With rapid-fire quickness, the matches were displayed above Greer’s head, each black space lighting up and rolling to its proper letter like train times at Union Station, one after the other.
For those moments Greer ceased to be M.C. and was once again a Team Blue recruiter. He and his colleagues had mapped out their response, from an administrative and financial level, to every possible match-up. He held his breath as Blue was matched.
The completed board read as follows:
GREY(England)
vs.
WHITE(Mexico)
BLACK(Russia)
vs.
SILVER(France)
GOLD(Italy)
vs.
GREEN(Ireland)
BLUE(USA)
vs.
RED(Japan)
The final letter clicked in place and the draw was over. In that same instant, all across the globe an unthinkable amount of money, blue-blood and newly minted fortunes alike, was pooled as odds were calculated and wagers were placed. Other, stranger wagers came in, odd and cryptic and written in contract form. Greer learned long ago that it was best not to delve into the dark minds of those who gambled with things more precious than money, sometimes t
heir limbs or organs—or, worst of all, their entire selves, all to settle a score. The odds moved and shifted with the momentum of the wagers and the excitement that came with knowing that at any time they could be called to term, for the Tournament was now open and the teams could attack at any second.
Greer Nichols stepped up and on to the raised platform once again. He cleared his throat and brought his hands together in front of him as he slowly shifted his gaze across each of the lenses that watched him. After a moment he spoke. His deep voice once more took on an uncharacteristically proper air, more subdued.
“It has been our practice in this, the highest circle of the Tournament, to be as forthcoming with each other as is possible, and it is with this pledge in mind that I speak to you once again.”
Greer paused for several moments to allow for his words to be translated across multiple languages and dialects.
“Until now, the Tournament has been used as a forum for wagers of every type, provided they were of a certain scale. We have seen some of the most extraordinary sums exchanged and deeds passed, objects of every sort won and lost. Many debts have been settled in this forum that would not otherwise have been settled without issue. Today things are changing, and I felt the collective administrations should know of it. Time will tell if I am wrong.”
Greer paused again and shifted his gaze up behind him at the board. His look was slow and deliberate.
“As you can see, we at Blue have drawn Team Red for the first round. We are both pleased and excited by this, because it allows us to put into place a plan we have been formulating for quite some time.”
Greer turned back to look directly at his audience of lenses once more. His face, unreadable until that point, now held the faintest hint of a grin.
“We’ve decided to take our first round opponents up on a wager of a different type. Both of our teams have within the ranks of their patrons certain government officials who wish to settle a long-standing foreign policy point of contention between our two countries. As you may know, the matter of the Futenma Air Station in Okinawa has become newsworthy. Without going into too much detail, the Japanese government wishes all of the Marines stationed there withdrawn and the land requisitioned. The United States government does not. Negotiations on behalf of our two governments have not yielded satisfactory results. We are at a political standstill. Obviously, neither country has faith in the other’s politics. Certain agents in both governments do, however, have complete faith in their respective teams. It seems only natural, then, that the matter should be decided in that manner.”
The Tournament Trilogy Page 13