The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  At noon, on the last day of November, it was where Team Blue disembarked.

  It was a drizzly day in Tokyo—not enough to stop people from venturing about in the city, but enough to keep them to the eves and awnings when possible. It was also the midday lunch rush. The kiosk level of Shinjuku station, where the main exits are, looked like an anthill in turmoil. People walked every which way, dashing when they had to, taking advantage of open lanes. They moved around the shops and stalls with a practiced efficiency, brushing by people and goods with millimeters to spare. Japanese businessmen dressed in ties of every color but suits of only two: blue and black. The women wore skirts and blouses, business drab. Students from Tokyo’s many metropolitan high schools shuffled about in groups dressed in variations of a single style of uniform: pleated skirt and a button up shirt for girls, slack and ties for the boys, and leather loafers for both. A handful of kids did what they could to distinguish themselves, using temporary hair dyes of every color of the rainbow often coupled with clip-on extensions and odd piercings, but only during after-school hours. Otherwise they settled for a hip disheveled look by hiking up skirts and rolling up jacket sleeves.

  Typically, these commuters wore a constant look of grim determination. It was a battle of sorts just to move about in Tokyo. Their fixed gazes were rarely diverted, their pace rarely shaken, but on that day a good many were distracted by the three Americans walking through their station.

  In an area accustomed to tourists, these three stood out nonetheless. For one, they walked with a broad shouldered gate that was all the more confident for its slow pace. They formed a triangle wide enough to walk in between, yet nobody did. Their very presence was a moving wall through which none would enter. They wore a sort of uniform as well: weathered canvas jackets of deep blue, modified with extra zippers at the sleeves and shoulders.

  In the lead point was Johnnie Northern; he carried a small duffel bag with his left hand and popped the knuckles of his right with his thumb. He was barely smiling and his blue eyes, a rarity in that area of the world, were shielded by yellow-lensed sunglasses. Behind and to his left walked Max Haulden, swinging his head from side to side as if mechanized. Occasionally, he would absently tap on the left side of his chest like he had an involuntary tic. Someone who didn’t know him might say he looked nervous, his brow slightly ridged, or even sad on account of his soft brown eyes just shy of fully open. But that was how Max always looked, and it was best not to assume with a man like him.

  To Northern’s right walked Nikkie Hix. She was cute and blonde in all of the ways many of the Japanese girls wished that they were, but with a heavier presence. She seemed focused on something just beyond the view of everyone else; as a sweeper she had the habit of seeing two steps ahead. Anticipation was her game.

  “Jesus, John. They could be any one of these people,” said Max as he panned the suited, black-haired men and women. It was hard for him to pinpoint the age of many of them to within a decade. And everyone looked at them suspiciously. Any one of them could pull a gun at any second. Max tapped his own in his jacket again as a young Japanese man eyed him suspiciously before moving on.

  “We’ll know them when we see them,” said Northern. “It’s what we do.”

  “Let’s just get to the hotel,” said Hix, her voice the sort of calm one might use in the cave of a hibernating bear. “That’s a good base of operations. I’ll be able to stake out perimeters.”

  “They must know we’re here,” said Max.

  “They do, no doubt,” Northern said, “but they can’t know where we are. This city is too big. Too saturated with people. We have some time.”

  As they exited the station they came upon a street crossing. There they waited alongside a thousand others for the light to change so they could move to the taxi rank on the west side. They split themselves apart, each moving to an area in which other foreigners, mostly tourists, also waited to cross. Max was suddenly reminded of how he used to tuck away in the cubbies of his high school library whenever classes of students ventured near. He would stay completely still, sometimes even shallow his breathing to hide in plain sight. No doubt they saw him, but he liked to think it helped make him invisible. He did that now, in Tokyo, surrounded by the masses, and he couldn’t help thinking that they, too, were being seen by the very people they sought to avoid. He looked at Northern, carrying himself like a man born in the city, and couldn’t help but wonder if his confidence wasn’t part ignorance. The three of them were the up-thrust nails here, just waiting for the hammer.

  When they finally reached their cab Northern flashed a small grin.

  “See? Nothing to it,” he said, ushering them both in and even gazing about one last time, as if to bait anyone who might be looking; to prove that they were, in fact, never in danger, not with him at the helm. He sat himself in the passenger’s seat and gave the white gloved cabbie a slip of paper with directions to the Hotel New Otani. Max let out a heavy breath as the cabbie pulled a lever to close the door behind him and the trio set off down the streets of Tokyo.

  Northern’s oozing calm was grating upon Max by the time they pushed through the wide double doors of the New Otani into its lush, marble floored atrium. The lulling sound of a small waterfall came from the hotel’s large interior gardens and mixed with the soft taps of patent leather shoes on stone as attendants bustled about. Two uniformed doormen in bucket hats bowed in welcome.

  ————

  Their room was on the fourth floor, as low to the ground as they could manage and in the least crowded wing, as requested. Their room was number 426, an elaborately appointed suite with two king beds and one rollout, three rooms all told, not including the bathroom. But they never even went into it. Northern set the duffle bag down in front of 426 then moved over to 427 across the hall and knocked gently. After a moment he nodded at Max, who unzipped the bag and took out a small electronic device the size of a cellphone. He plugged one end of a single pronged cord into its top and the other into a small receiver at the base of the electronic lock on the door. He ran a scanning program and waited. The two men watched for any sign from Hix as she leaned casually against the wall back by the elevators on guard. After a moment the device beeped.

  “The key card,” he said. Northern took it out of its sleeve and handed it to his striker.

  “It’ll erase the original unlock code.” He slipped the card into a thin opening on the side of the device.

  “That’s fine,” said Northern.

  The device whirred and snapped like a camera taking a picture, then spit the card back out. Max took it, examined it briefly, and slid it into the lock on the door. The LED light on the lockbox went green. He pushed open the door. Northern called softly for Hix and all three went in to the new room.

  “I know we’re exhausted but we have to post watch. We’ll go two up, one down, to help each other combat the jetlag,” Northern said, glancing about the room and pushing open the curtains at the far window.

  “I’ll stay up first,” Hix said, plopping down in the desk chair by the far wall. “I slept most of the flight.”

  “Me too,” Max said quickly. “I’ll stay up.”

  Northern glanced up at his striker, vaguely surprised. “Well I didn’t mean to make both of you stay up.”

  “I can’t sleep right now anyway,” Max said hastily, “I’m... unsettled. By the flight and all.”

  Northern shrugged. “Fine by me.” He flopped out on one of the two beds. “Wake me in two hours.”

  Northern was asleep almost instantly, his breath slowing to a soft, rhythmic pull and hiss. Max and Nikkie spoke in low tones about nothing in particular, remarking about the oddness of the culture in which they were steeped, exemplified by the intricate and toilet in the bathroom. They spoke of the qualms of air travel and trials of jetlag. It wasn’t long until they returned, once again, to profiling the team they faced, continuing a conversation that had been on and off ever since they got their draw.

  “
His firing report proves it,” Max said, speaking of Amon Jinbo, the Red striker. “He’s trigger happy. Obsessed with firepower. He shoots that huge gun and it jars his arms, throws him off. Every time he hits too high. He’s been this way for years, ever since we first met them. You just can’t make yourself a moving target for him. That’s when he gets you. He may be just a kid, but he’s excellent at leading a target.”

  Hix had pulled her legs to her chest and was resting her chin on her knees. As she listened to Max she occasionally nodded off, succumbing to the sandbag weight of sleep deprivation. Although it was five in the afternoon in Tokyo, it was midnight in San Diego. At first Max would wake her as soon as she started to slip, prompting her with questions or tapping her shoulder. He didn’t feel tired, but it was always best to have two people up on watch to look out for each other. After the third time that she lowered her head in small hitch steps against her will, he just watched her as she slept. He especially liked her neck, brushed lightly here and there by her sandy blonde hair. It was a golden-brown neck, and it looked soft, and dipped and cupped beautifully. He wondered what it might be like to touch it, perhaps drink water from it in the shower like a tiny teacup. Her ears were tiny too, and even they looked soft. Everything about her looked soft, but Max also knew just how hard she could be. He liked her even more for that side of her, the side only he saw. He and Northern.

  He watched her for perhaps thirty seconds before he tapped her shoulder again.

  “Nikkie,” he said softly. She slowly opened her eyes again, and then sat up abruptly. She looked at Max and smiled, her face reddened.

  “Sorry. I guess I’m more tired than I thought.”

  “That’s all right. I’d let you sleep, but...”

  “No no. You’re right to wake me.”

  “Tell me about their sweeper,” he said, although he already knew everything he could know. “That might help you stay awake.”

  “Tenri Fuse kind of creeps me out, actually. He moves strangely. Kind of prances, even when he shoots. I dunno, it’s hard to explain.”

  “Keep going.”

  “When I survey the field, it’s mechanical. I go into a zone and it becomes a chess game. But him... when I imagine him sweeping, I picture him creeping about the edges of the field, watching us like a voyeur. Does that make any sense?”

  “You think he’s a pervert.”

  Nikkie laughed then quickly shut up and glanced over at Northern, who stirred briefly but slept on.

  “I guess, sort of. Who knows,” she said, shrugging. In the silence that followed she looked over at Northern again and rubbed her eyes to stay awake.

  “Do you think he’s doing the right thing?” Max whispered, watching her as she looked at Northern.

  “The right thing?”

  “Do you think this is smart? Coming here like this?”

  She looked hard at Max for a long moment in which Max dearly wished he had never asked. What if she thought him a coward? What if she thought him insubordinate when he was just looking at things realistically?

  “I can’t claim to know what he’s thinking all the time,” she said. “I really wish I could, but I can’t. I do know this. Johnnie’s very good at what he does, and I’m willing to follow him anywhere he leads.”

  “Of course. I only wonder sometimes—”

  “And it’s good to wonder. And it’s good to challenge him even. He appreciates that. But we’re already here, Max. It’s already done.”

  After several minutes in which Max was quiet, Nikkie spoke up once more.

  “He’s one of the best out there, and he’s only going to get better. But we’re nothing without you. We’re a team. Understand?”

  Max smiled and gave a very small nod.

  Moments later Max heard a rustling in the hallway. Nikkie jumped up and tapped Northern. His eyes opened instantly.

  “What?” he asked hoarsely. She placed one finger over his mouth. Max was already by the door listening, his gun out. The rustling became louder and then passed, fading away into silence. Max shook his head. Nikkie let out a breath.

  “You sure you want us to wake you every time?”

  “Every time. Their people will have found the booking by now. They could come at any minute.”

  Max slumped back down in his chair, facing the door. Nikkie sat on the bed to his left.

  Twenty minutes later, just when Northern was drifting off, there was another shuffling. And again ten minutes later. And again thirty minutes after that.

  “If we keep this up we’re going to be worse off than when we got off the plane,” said Max.

  “You want to go after them,” Northern said, more of a statement than a question.

  “At this point it might be better.”

  “You know as well as I do that they are near. If we go out there we lose the advantage,” he said, but his voice seemed distant, as if he was trying to focus on some insubstantial, floating thing. On the bed Hix propped herself more severely against the backboard, trying to will herself into wakefulness. Max was wide eyed, but only because he was past tired and into the zone where his body was overcompensating. It was a second wind that couldn’t last long and the crash would be that much harder.

  They heard another shuffling. Max wearily rose and positioned himself by the door again. This time the shuffling stopped before fading. Max tensed and Nikkie crept up beside him, her own gun out.

  They heard an agitated rattling nearby. Northern took his gun from the nightstand and flicked off the safety. Suddenly their door handle was rattling, Northern raised and aimed, but signaled for his team to hold. The rattling stopped and was followed by a slew of unintelligible cursing and a fit of hiccups. Then more shuffling, a pause, and another bit of rattling one door down. More drunken slurring and hiccupping.

  Northern lowered his gun and rubbed his eyes. Max shook his head.

  “Unpopulated my ass,” he muttered, sitting down once more.

  “Stay alert,” said Northern. Nikkie crept up on the bed again and sagged against the headboard, her eyes cast down.

  Team Blue waited.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ALLEN LOCKTON’S WORK NEVER stopped. His was a job not confined to pre-Tournament activity. Lock was a full time employee, beholden to no one team, only the overarching organization itself. He often tried to identify precisely which time was the busiest for him: before, during, or after a Tournament. Inevitably, he settled on the present.

  While it might be hard to identify when he was busiest, it was very easy for him to identify who always seemed, in one way or another, to make him run the most:

  Eddie Mazaryk.

  No team contributed more to his workload than Black, and their captain specifically. He was the one client that infallibly proved to be a pain in the ass. Back when he was running documents across Chicago for the courier service, one law firm always hired him to run correspondence to their sister office just across the Chicago River, maybe one quarter mile away as the crow flies. The problem was Lock couldn’t fly, and the closest bike-worthy crossing was at Ping Tom Memorial park, almost a mile away, after which a prolonged and convoluted route finally took you to the building twenty minutes later—at best. The run had a reputation amongst couriers, who had come to call it the ‘legal lashing.’ Nobody ever figured out a quicker route as long as he worked there. Lock delivered for that firm over twenty times, and on the outset of every one of them he would look across the highway at his destination and scowl.

  That’s how he felt now, in St. Petersburg once more, looking for Eddie Mazaryk again. No other Tournament courier could ever seem to find him with any regularity, and so the job was invariably his. Back as a bike-courier, Lock had to deal with only snooty lawyers or snappy executives when he finally reached his destinations. They could talk at him if he was late, but that was about it, and that was some measure of comfort. At the tail end of this trip was a gun-toting sociopath to whom he was supposed to hand-deliver a fine statement totali
ng well over a million Euros.

  What a pain in the ass.

  Mazaryk had been angry with fines in the past. Lock recalled having to serve Black a fine last cycle for what the organization had termed “reckless endangerment.” Mazaryk had been furious. In his own seething, ice-water way, he stated that he took issue with the use of the term “reckless” and flatly refused to pay the fine until the wording was changed. Six days and another round trip ticket later, the newly phrased fine was delivered by Lock and he promptly agreed to pay in full.

  This time the collective administration painstakingly phrased this newest infraction, charging Black with “severe and endangering offensive tactics.” While this seemed indisputable to Lock, or anyone else that had seen the Club Frieze security tapes for that night, you just never knew with Eddie Mazaryk. The man was a loose cannon.

  When tracking Black, Lock found it best to first go to where he’d last found them, in this case, the small ale house in the back alley of western St. Petersburg. Because of his knack for remembering routes and places, Lock managed to trace his way past the crumbling courtyard and back down the alley strung above with washing. He found the sideway where the little boy in the rain slicker had directed him, but there was no boy this time. In all likelihood, there would be no Mazaryk either. That would be far, far too easy.

  At least the pub was open. A single, guttering flame still flickered in an old lantern above the faded sign. He pushed open the door and stepped in to the very same smoky gloom he had visited mere weeks ago. If he wasn’t mistaken the same two men were playing chess at the same table. The same bartender looked up with the same complacent expectancy, and took a slow, hissing drag off of a cigarette made from the same cloyingly sweet tobacco. The same man even read a paper by the back stairway. But the atmosphere wasn’t as heavy, the silence not as intense, and Lock immediately knew that Team Black had gone. Nonetheless, it was worth a shot. Maybe they left something behind, some clue.