The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “He’s consolidating,” Lock said. Frank fell in behind him, looking distastefully back at the empty shack. “He’s gathering his cards. Assembling his hand.”

  “What?”

  “He’s gone home, Frank.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “He’s Russian. He’s all that is Russia. He is their head. Where do you think he’d call home?”

  Frank shrugged. “Moscow, I guess.”

  “Moscow.” Lock nodded. “So it’s to Moscow we go.”

  Chapter Nine

  “SHE SAID ‘PEOPLE REMEMBER what I do.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Tom Elrey stared blankly over the parking lot, hands hitched behind the straps of his backpack.

  “I can’t believe we’re even still talking about this TJ. It’s Ellie Willmore, for Christ’s sake. Who gives a shit?”

  But Tom did. Tom prided himself on being universally liked. That anyone, however marginal, might not have at least a jovial affinity towards him bothered him greatly. His dismissive friend, a snide young girl named Tamara, was a transfer student, and popular in the way that attractive new girls are: powerfully and briefly. She was riding the crest of her wave, but it was breaking, and Tom thought her a little overconfident. Tamara didn’t know Ellie. Tamara hadn’t the time to truly know anyone, although she certainly was giving it her best with him. To be fair, Tom didn’t know Ellie either, but at least he’d seen her around for more than a few months.

  “Who is Ellie, even?” Tamara chimed again. “What does that girl even do, you know? Who cares, right?” All questions meant to go unanswered.

  “Still,” Tom said, gazing back over the school again. “Strange thing to say. To me.”

  “What’s more important is if you’re coming over to my place this weekend. My house is open, parents all gone, we’ve got some beer my dad won’t miss and a couple of bottles of vodka my mom hasn’t touched in a year. I just found them, still in boxes. Could be fun,” she said, winking far too obviously.

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” Tom said, still distracted. “I think it’s gonna be a bit bigger than you’re thinking.”

  “I’m getting to know a lot of people.”

  You mean you’re sucking up to a lot of people, literally, Tom thought. “Yes, you are.”

  “So long as you’re there,” she said, and with a flip of her hips she turned and bounced off, leaving Tom to his thoughts. He stood that way a long moment, wondering why Ellie’s comment still plucked at him. As oblivious as Tamara was, she was right about Ellie. Nobody cared enough about her to know who she was, what she liked or did when she wasn’t toting her massive bag from class to class like a homeless person. Realization dawned on Tom that he felt slightly embarrassed at how he’d pandered to the pecking order of the school. He’d picked the low hanging fruit, making himself feel better for a moment by messing with a girl who, for all it seemed, wanted nothing more than to shuffle unhampered through the day. It was a strange feeling, this guilt, and one that he didn’t enjoy.

  So it was that when he saw her heading towards her car, alone, he approached.

  “Ellie! Hey! Hold up a sec!”

  Ellie was wary. She looked about, expecting an audience for another one of TJ Elrey’s sideshows, but saw none. A few people made their way quickly to their cars in the cold, but that was it. Nobody seemed to notice.

  “What is it this time, Tom?” she sighed.

  “Hey, listen,” he started, but then realized he had no idea what to say. He only wanted this nagging feeling of guilt to go away so that he could go back to not thinking about her.

  “Yes?”

  “Uh, hi,” he said, buying time. He’d thought that simply addressing her might help. Most people liked his attention. That was a gift, of sorts, right? But rather than set her at ease he made her even more uncomfortable. She looked at the ground and then up at him again. “Can I help you with something?” She sounded angry.

  “There’s a party tonight,” Tom said haltingly, at a rare loss for words. Immediately he regretted it. What if she actually showed up?

  “Just a dumb thing,” he added, trying to brush it off like he’d run into a distant relative, talking about weekend plans both of them would immediately forget when they turned away from each other. No big deal. Of course she wouldn’t show up. She was Ellie Willmore. She did her own things on weekends, whatever they were, away from him.

  “Where?” she asked.

  Uh oh. Tom swallowed and tried to think of a gracious exit, but it was too late. “Tamara’s place. The new girl. I mean, I know you’re busy though and all. And it’s gonna suck.”

  Ellie squinted strangely at him, trying to piece him together, but ultimately shook her head. “I’ve got to go, Tom. Bye.”

  “Yeah, of course. Anyway. Later.”

  Ellie walked away down the aisles of cars without looking back at him, and Tom wondered if he’d made a big mistake.

  ————

  “Can you believe this?”

  Ellie’s father Mark enjoyed talking to the television. This time it was another report of what had come to be known as the “Blue Dock Memorial.” The decrepit structure of rusty beams, jagged metal and trash was now an ocean of flowers and cards. A rainbow of colors half of a football field wide. The murky water was strewn with petals and the odd unfortunate stuffed animal bobbing along to the waves before being sucked under against the concrete where the two had died. Their names were known now, but all else remained up to the imaginations of the steady stream of curious mourners. Johnnie Northern and Nikkie Hix had abruptly become something more than themselves.

  “Do you know anything about this El? Is this a teenager thing?”

  “Did you hear me, Dad?” Ellie asked, exasperated. “There’s a party tonight. I was invited.” But Mark was transfixed. After another span of his staring at the television, Ellie sighed.

  “I dunno, it’s a competition or something. Kids at school won’t shut up about it. Mom? Hello? A party.”

  “Party?” Dianne repeated, also watching the television, but from the kitchen.

  “I was invited.”

  “You were? What party?”

  Ellie was suddenly uncomfortable. What she was about to tell her mother was totally foreign to her.

  “There was just this guy—boy—at school who told me about it. Asked me if I wanted to go.”

  Her mother blinked at her.

  “Mom?”

  “Well what kind of boy? What kind of party? A drinking party? Your sister never went to those.”

  “All right,” Ellie said, turning away. “Let’s forget about all this, shall we? Never mind. I’m not going.”

  Ellie left her mother bewildered and mute, the sound of the news behind her. “Kelly never went to anything,” she muttered. “Now she’s doing God knows what to herself at college.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” Ellie retreated downstairs into her room. She was suddenly exhausted and sat for a long time staring out of her recessed window, watching the leaves fall into the sill where they would stay and rot. When had it last been cleaned out? Two years ago? Five? Was there perhaps a single leaf blown from a tree years before she was even born that still rested at the bottom of the heap there, slowly being eaten away by whatever lived between the rocks of a place totally forgotten?

  After a time, she decided.

  She stood up and began dressing to go out.

  She wore what she thought was her most flattering pair of jeans and a fluttering copper colored top with a neckline that dipped a bit and that she thought worked well with her pale coloring. It showed a scattering of freckles across the tops of her shoulders that she wasn’t crazy about, but it was the best she had. She grabbed a small purse and packed her phone, her license, some cash, and made her way up the stairs and for the front door. Her parents still sat in the kitchen muttering and fluttering the newspaper.

  ————

  She stood i
n front of Tamara’s laughably large McMansion for only a moment. Her instinct for facing dreadfully awkward situations head-on kicked in and she simply opened up the front door and stepped inside as if she knew what she was doing. She figured that an air of familiarity with such things—parties and drinking and whatnot—often went the majority of the distance.

  A glance around just inside the door revealed nothing out of the ordinary. A large foyer opened up before her with a two part stairway at the back: one set led up and to the left, the other down and to the right. She could hear a muted bass beat and caught a whiff of new-house smell tainted by cigarettes and spilled beer. She wondered what Tamara’s parents did, how much they had worked for these things to have them treated like coasters by seventeen year-olds. On the couch nearest Ellie a soporific couple, juniors she recognized, glanced at her. They seemed not to register her entrance and returned to each other, giggling and dropping a cup full of red punch on the tiled floor.

  Ellie decided not to chance the upstairs, which likely led to bedrooms and things best left alone. Instead she steeled herself on the top of the stairway leading down and reminded herself of her best qualities. She could smile and laugh with the best of them, if the time was right. She didn’t smell or stutter or walk strangely. She was normal. With this last affirmation playing over and over again in her head, she went downstairs.

  It was a good ten degrees hotter in the basement, and she smelled wet rugs and damp concrete mixed with the skunk tang of weed. As soon as she hit the last stair everyone turned to look. She felt herself flush, and she knew that whenever she flushed she looked like she’d run a marathon. Not a good start. Then she saw Tamara.

  Tamara was entirely pushed up. She wore heels that pushed her calves up and a dress that pushed her breasts up. She even held her head at an upward angle, although it was wobbly and Ellie could tell she was already drunk. She clutched a formal crystal cocktail glass filled to the brim with a pink drink. It sloshed about, spilling over slightly as she gestured to a small group gathered near her, most of whom Ellie recognized and only one of whom she had ever spoken to. Tom Elrey. He sat far back in a leather lounger precariously balancing a cup full of beer on one arm of the chair and stirring it absently with his pinkie finger.

  Ellie stood like a spooked deer, dreading what was coming but knowing she was already in too deep. As Tamara noticed her she dropped off her conversation mid-word. The rest of the room looked over at her in turn, Tom as well. She saw a strange glint in his eye; it wasn’t pity, exactly... it was something closer to fear than pity, although whether it was for her or for himself she couldn’t tell.

  “What... Tamara began, winding herself up and gesturing her drink across the carpet in front of her. “What are you doing here?”

  Ellie could do nothing but stand her ground.

  “Hello Tamara,” she said, ignoring a rising feeling of nausea. The whole of the party in the rather sizeable basement was looking at her now; she’d never felt so exposed. She made an effort not to cross her arms over her chest.

  “This is my house,” Tamara spat. “What are you doing in my house?”

  Behind her Tom Elrey shook his head slightly. Ellie narrowed her eyes. This time she made an effort not to clench her fists. “I was invited,” she said through her teeth.

  Tamara belted out a shrill hoot. “You? Invited? Hardly.” She set her drink down and wiped her hands on her dress. “Tell me,” she slurred, spreading her arms wide. “Did anybody here invite this girl to my party?”

  The room filled with deafening silence. She saw some people look away, embarrassed for her. Some small part of her brain noticed that several of these kids conspicuously wore blue as sweatbands or kerchiefs or ribbons tied here and there. She thought of her father watching the news report back at home and, incredibly, she longed to be with him now, sitting quietly, only having to respond to the television, able to tune out life with the click of a button. Tom Elrey was one of those looking away. Nonetheless Ellie stared at him. Seeing this, Tamara turned to Tom and brushed his arm. Ellie saw his jaw muscle work.

  “TJ, did you invite her?” Tamara asked.

  “I may have said something,” Tom mumbled, looking at nobody. “I don’t know, I didn’t think she’d come I guess.”

  She frowned at Tom for a moment before regaining herself. “You see?” Tamara challenged. “Nobody wants you here.” She fumbled at her drink and brought it to her mouth in a sloppy gesture of finality. Ellie never took her eyes off Tom.

  “I’ve made a mistake,” she said, her voice flat as slate.

  “Yes, you did,” Tamara said.

  Ellie’s eyes lingered on Tom before she turned on her heel and walked back upstairs. Only when she was back in her parent’s minivan did she allow herself to cry, and even then only a single wail.

  ————

  Back home she forced herself to be even quieter on reentry than she was when she left. The only thing more pathetic, she thought, than sneaking out of your parents’ house was sneaking back in barely twenty minutes later. If Ellie didn’t feel so sick, she’d probably laugh at the idiocy: Her parents were in the exact same positions around the television, with the same newspapers fluttering in their hands. The news program still mumbled in the background. How much happens in the moments when nobody pays attention, she thought. She shook her head and made her way down to her room’s secluded darkness. Rarely had it felt so appropriate. She decided this was her scene; a basement of a different sort. When she grew up she’d graduate to the dining room table and the newspaper and the news. Pink cocktails, crystal cups, pawing on the couch: these things were for other people.

  With the picture of Tom Elrey dropping his gaze still running around her mind like a stereoscope, she sat behind her cluttered desk, looking to do anything to take her mind away. She ended up resting her head in the crook of her elbow and closing her eyes. Soon she slept.

  When she awoke the house was quiet and dark. Moonlight dappled through the slatted shades of her window. She’d been dreaming vividly, but her dreams flew away as she sat up. Her neck ached. She saw that it was very late, or very early, depending on your point of view. Two in the morning. Her old familiar friend.

  She couldn’t say what had awoken her, save that perhaps it was the room’s cold. Her window was cracked, and the winter damp had seeped in. She shivered and rubbed her face, and it was only then that she realized that she never left that window open. She sat back and blinked several times to assure herself that she was where she thought she was, not in a meta-dream, and then she noticed a file folder laying upon her desk.

  The folder glinted metallic in the darkness. Only when she grasped it and held it to her face did she realize that it was pure blue—the exact color of blue she’d seen around school of late. It dripped in the moonlight that fought its way down to her and it seemed unnaturally heavy in her hands. Dreamlike.

  “Huh.” A dream after all. She sat back in her chair and waited for everything to pop, but there was no pop. Only the soft creaking press of the wind against the house.

  All right then, it must be some strange piece of mail her mother brought down for her. Or perhaps some articles her father had clipped and that her mother had packaged up. But when she held it up to the window she saw the letter “T” stamped upon it and she became anxious. She locked the window and quickly moved to turn on the overhead light. It was hard to mistake that letter; it was fast becoming the most recognizable letter of the alphabet. Somewhere above her the house cracked deeper into a sleeping position and Ellie jumped. She took several deep breaths and forced herself to become calm again, listening. Only the constant tick of the grandfather clock upstairs could be heard, marching forward relentlessly as it had for as long as she could remember.

  She opened the folder.

  Chapter Ten

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M just going to let them walk,” Greer said, one hand resting upon his head as he scanned a rainy runway of San Diego International Airport t
hrough the terminal windows. Beside him Ian Finn stood slightly hunched, his gun hand curled protectively over his stomach, an old habit. Old habits were hard for Ian Finn to break. His face was an expression of grim death; pale, with bags under his eyes so large you could hide a body in them. His jaw was set, his mouth a fine line as he watched two of his sworn enemies ushered across the tarmac to a humming Boeing 747, gearing up to fly them to their freedom.

  Safely hidden away inside of the terminal, the two men stood silently as Draden Tate first rubbed his wrists, then cracked his neck, yawning like a pit-bull. As soon as Christina Stoke was released she snapped her hands back and actually spat at the guard, who stepped away from her as if she were feral, which, Greer thought, wasn’t exactly untrue. He looked away, disgusted.

  “What did you tell them?” Ian asked.

  “Simply that we couldn’t hold them any longer. That their people were making too much noise. That we had to let them go.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Sort of. Grey Admin threatened to go public in the UK. Really public. Front page of the London Times and the Sun and everything else. ‘Greys held against their will in California prison’ and all that. We’d have denied, of course, but then you went ahead and came up with this idea,” Greer gestured haphazardly out at the jet, “and I figure it’s got to be better than sitting around getting threatened and doing nothing.”

  “They’ll go right to him,” Ian said.

  “I’m not so sure. I think they’ll guess we’ve got someone tailing them.”

  “Yeah. Well. They’ll never guess who,” Ian said, chewing on a nail and spitting it out. He swallowed hard and blinked for what seemed to Greer like the first time in minutes.

  “Are you all right?” Greer asked.

  Ian jammed his jittery left hand into his jeans pocket. “I’m fine,” he said too quickly. “I just hate flying.”

  Greer watched him openly for a moment. “Right,” he said warily. “I left you something for that. I figured after your last outing you might be a bit on edge.”