The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “When can I get on the damn plane?”

  “As soon as our man signals that Tate and Stoke are where they won’t see you.”

  They fell into an uneasy silence, watching the whirring spiral of the engines. Ian sniffed and rubbed his eyes. Greer wondered if perhaps this wasn’t one enormous mistake following another. He’d fretted about the man’s mental stability, but now it seemed as though physically Ian might crumple. That he was Greer’s only choice gave him little comfort. Still, sending in a bit of a liability was better than doing nothing at all.

  “Why are you doing this Ian? Nobody else—” but before Greer could finish, one of the baggage handlers stepped away from the loading belt, took off his orange mufflers, and obviously scratched his head before popping them back on.

  “That’s it,” Greer said. “Time to go. Quickly.”

  Without speaking, Ian moved forward and down the gangway to their right, eventually emerging on the tarmac where the two baggage handlers stood waiting. One nodded at Ian and gestured with a tick towards the hydraulic loading platform behind him.

  “We were told to hide you away, no questions. This is the best we got. The cargo hold is pressurized for the pets and there’s a fold out seat in there on the far wall.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Best we got.” He shuffled a wad of tobacco across his lower lip. Ian looked up and into the darkness of the cargo hold.

  “Christ,” he said. A muttered curse and a prayer at the same time.

  “Hurry, or you’ll miss your window.”

  Ian took a grudging step on to the platform and staggered a bit as it raised in whining jerks. He could barely see Greer up in the terminal watching him. His look was solemn and not at all apologetic; Ian himself had made this choice. Then Ian was enveloped in the weakly lit darkness of the cargo hold as the lift sealed itself with a hiss. He was hit by the musty, coppery scent of terrified animals in crates. As if to emphasize his plight a large brown lab whined in the far corner as the cargo door locked itself with two loud bangs.

  As his eyes adjusted Ian found his seat, if it could be called such. More of a thinly padded plank draped in a harness. Ian moved over to it and sat lightly, afraid it might snap. He examined the straps, his rear already uncomfortable, and it took him nearly until takeoff to figure out that they were meant to be worn across his chest. Only when the noise of the thrusters became deafening were his shaking hands finally able to fasten all of the buckles. The high pitch of the engines mixed with the bays of Ian’s company to form a punishing overture. In the process of covering his ears and praying to God, something of a pre-flight ritual for Ian, his hand bumped against what he thought was a life-vest. He peeked at it and realized that it was a paper bag taped to the side of his seat. It came away with a tug and Ian discovered the bottle. Good Irish whisky. He smiled grimly. Perhaps this Greer Nichols character was a man he could come to like after all.

  ————

  He took another healthy swig, breathing in the burn through his mouth as he sat tall, his head back, staring at the low ceiling. As the plane leveled off, the raucous pitch had eased, although it smelled like one of the dogs had made a mess in their kennel. Poor things, he thought, buffeted about the country at the whims of their masters. He sipped in the yellow half-light and pondered how he had found himself rocketing across the sky in the basement of a coffin right along with them. Pyper was right: he held no illusions of justice. Not even vengeance... not really. He hadn’t been personally wronged by Auldborne. He’d never even met the man in Tournament play. And yet here he was. At least the dogs had an excuse.

  As his drink seeped in enough to still him, he dwelled on his motives. He owed nothing to Blue, nothing to anyone save perhaps to Kayla and Pyper, and to his mother. His mother would not be happy if he got himself killed out here, but he’d still agreed to go. Something deep within him had pulled the trigger. Something dark that was slowly bubbling to the surface like a shipwreck dredged from the ocean floor.

  With whisky holding the door to his mind open, thoughts came to him unbidden. He felt strongly, felt it within his bones, that the twin deaths of Blue were more than they seemed. Something had broken that night in California. Something in the killings whispered to him. In his life, and in the Tournament—there was no difference between the two, not anymore—he felt he was watching a play, one in which everyone from Alex Auldborne to Greer Nichols to Father Darby to his own flesh and blood father, locked away on high and conspicuously silent, was an actor. There was a face behind every face and the world was merely a cardboard façade holding back the darkness off stage. It was as if everything only lit up on cue, and only when Ian looked. As he sat in the belly of the airplane it was easy to believe that the stage hands were simply upending and resetting the scenery. The plane needn’t move at all.

  Worse, Ian felt with a certain sickness that the actors were scanning the crowd, looking for helpless audience members, poor suckers whom they could drag on stage and humiliate. They would find Ian soon enough, unless he changed the act before they could. They’d find him, and when they were done with him, they would drag him off stage and he’d be forced to see the guts of the machine. He wouldn’t like what he found.

  Ian swallowed another pull and watched the pacing of the animals. It was going to be a long flight.

  Chapter Eleven

  FRANK AND LOCK TOOK off just as large, fluffy flakes of snow began to fall outside of the airplane window. When they landed at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport three hours later, the storm front that had peppered the north was driving sheets of sleet upon the capital city. In the moments between airplane and cab their clothes were thinly coated in dirt, and Frank was soaked. His old windbreaker, strained near to bursting over a wet wool sweater, simply wasn’t going to cut it here. Lock asked the cabbie to take them to an outfitter. He was fairly sure the man didn’t understand a word he said, but he moved. That was the important part.

  “How do you not pack a waterproof coat, Frank? Or a tarp, or something,” Lock muttered as they trotted down a large, nearly deserted street in search of any store with clothes in the windows. The cabbie had insisted that they get out there, even after several pantomimes involving Lock’s own jacket, so he felt they had to be close.

  “How the hell did I find myself in Moscow, eh? How the hell anything?” Frank countered, rubbing his own arms and looked about excitedly despite the cold. This was Frank’s first visit to a foreign capital, and it felt surreal. These people looked like him, dressed near enough, but were speaking in gibberish. He was struck by the notion that everyone might be playing an involved prank on him.

  “Here, in here,” Lock said, pulling briefly on his sleeve and pointing under a dripping overhang where a series of stoic looking mannequins modeled great, puffy coats, each draped in a thick black scarf.

  “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff,” Frank nodded, his teeth chattering. “These will do nicely.” Frank opened the door, but Lock didn’t move.

  “Alle—Lock? Hello? Are we going in or what? It’s coming down sideways out here.”

  “Those scarves, I saw them all over the place at the airport,” Lock said. He turned and scanned the desolate street until he saw a ranging pack of young men and women scampering quickly for cover out of the snow. “Look! They’re on everybody!”

  “Yeah! It’s freezing, Lock. People wear scarves when it’s freezing.”

  “No. No, look,” Lock pointed out as a young couple ran from a cab towards a nearby stairwell. Frank squinted, and sure enough the man wore a black scarf, flared out around his neck like a cravat. The girl’s scarf, however, was turtle green. Frank was about to say so when he was stopped short. As she turned to laugh at something the man said, Frank saw a long swath of black ribbon woven in and out of the buttonholes of her jacket, its tail fluttering like a black cat’s.

  “And the eaves and gutters, on the poles, the buildings!”

  Frank saw hazy black shapes through the sle
et, accenting everything around him. Now that he really looked, he saw black fabric fluttering everywhere. Black kerchiefs on the handles of doors and tied to overhangs. Black ribbons snapped about in the sleet from the bars of windows and the antennae of the few passing cars. One barren winter tree nearby housed hundreds on its spindly branches like black leaves. Frank saw a wide, ominous black flag flown just below the Russian standard, high atop a grim, official-looking building in the distance. It was as if buckshot had ripped through the canvas of the grey afternoon to reveal scatterings of the black beneath.

  “Don’t you find it odd that there’s almost nobody around? This has to be near the city center. There should be more people here, no matter what the weather,” Lock said.

  “Maybe it’s a h-holiday or s-something.”

  “It’s no holiday, Frank, Russian or otherwise. And what is that sound? That humming. I heard it as soon as we stepped out of the cab.”

  “I just thought everything here h-hummed. Like they have a Ru-Russian nuclear hum thing going on or something. And maybe s-somebody died? That’s why all the black? I dunno, I just g-gotta go inside man, I’m fr-freezing.” Frank backed into the store with the ring of a bell, shaking himself like a dog and making his way immediately towards a rack full of black goose-down jackets, complete with two glossy black patches on either shoulder. He picked out the largest, gave it a once over, shrugged, and tucked it under his arm.

  “Hi there,” Frank said as he approached the cashier, a stout, square-faced woman who was dressed head to toe in black herself. “I’d like to buy this.”

  “She speaks Russian, Frank,” Lock said, rolling his eyes.

  “I speak English,” the cashier said huffily. Frank turned to Lock and let an admonishing look linger in the air.

  “Well, you can’t assume these things, anyway,” Lock said, faltering. Frank motioned for the credit card, which Lock produced from his inner jacket and reluctantly handed over.

  “You’re American,” the cashier said.

  “That’s right,” Frank said.

  “Too bad.”

  “And why’s that?”

  She simply shrugged and handed over the receipt. “Sign.”

  Frank eyed her warily as he scribbled an illegible series of swoops. Then he promptly put the coat on, tags and all.

  “Why all the black?” Lock asked simply, gesturing everywhere.

  “Black is our color.”

  “Your color. You mean your team’s color. The Tournament.”

  She shook her head with deliberate slowness. “I mean it is our color,” she said, before thumping her chest heavily several times. “Where do you think we all go today?” She pointed outside as a pair of women scampered past.

  “Inside?” Frank offered.

  “Russians, we do not fear little cold,” she sniffed. “Why don’t you follow and see?” She cracked a sly smile. “But maybe best for to keep quiet,” she added, her grin widening before snapping shut. “Have nice day.”

  Outside once more and now properly clothed, Frank faced the weather and laughed, blinking rapidly in the sleet. Lock flipped up his collar.

  “There,” Lock said, pointing at a group of young men and women emerging from a stairwell. They clapped each other on the back and spoke loudly, their voices swept away on the storm. One man slid back and forth on the snow, barely keeping balance. Another scraped a nearby car for a snowball that he lobbed at one of the girls. Once gathered, they, too, set off in the same direction down the street.

  “They look drunk. Celebrating something,” Lock said.

  “I’d be drunk too, to go cavorting in this. Awesome coat or not.”

  All five donned black handkerchiefs, which they tied around their arms or over their faces, bandito style. After they’d walked a safe distance ahead, Lock set off after them. Frank shuffled next to him. People seemed to be converging on the street ahead from a myriad of side roads, like tributaries called towards a river.

  “What did she mean, ‘keep quiet’? Whatever everyone’s going to, doesn’t look like a secret.”

  “Shhh.”

  “I mean look at this, no wonder it was deserted back there. The whole city is going this way.” Frank pointed at what looked like a black wall ringing a city park in the distance. Soon they were joined by others, and still others, as they joined the long stream filing forward. “What is that thing ahead? A street fair or something?” Frank squinted. A few people nearby looked over at them, their brows furrowed.

  “Shut up, Frank,” Lock hissed. “When you talk, everyone knows we’re not from here. Get it?”

  The two of them soon ran up against the wall, but it wasn’t made of brick and mortar. It was a roiling mass of people that spanned out on either side of them until lost in the snow, and it looked to be several hundred people deep, all adorned with black in one way or another. The hum they heard back up the road had slowly become a buzz, and then a low growl, and now a steady roar of chants, songs, and shouting. The air puffed with the breath of what Lock guessed had to be near a quarter million people. Black flags waved, pretty young women were hoisted upon shoulders. Lock could see the muted glow of flares or fireworks in the distance and smell their sulfur tang. And still more people came, piling behind Frank and Lock until they, too, became part of the massive black ring of humanity.

  “My God,” Lock whispered.

  “I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” Frank said, his eyes as wide as eggs.

  “It can’t be. So soon?”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” Frank murmured, “I think we’re stuck in the middle of a couple hundred thousand of our estranged killer’s biggest fans.”

  Chapter Twelve

  MAX READ THE FOLDER carefully. Then he threw it across his grandfather’s desk.

  He was still shaking from what had essentially been a breaking and entering. Although he admitted to himself that he never locked the screen door. This was Annapolis, for crying out loud, not Brooklyn. But then he’d been visited. Surprised by a man who had only just driven away. A big bald black man, impeccably dressed. He’d had two blue folders with him. He’d asked Max a question, listened to his answer, and given him one of them. Then he’d left.

  Max knew that the folder was nonsense and completely, deathly serious at the same time. It discussed a society of warriors. A select grouping of teams that competed against one another with the world as their arena and no rules to hamper them, save one: Minimize civilian contact. When he read the part about the total immunity they’d be given, global immunity, upheld in every country that they visited, he threw the folder across the room. One part of him said there wasn’t a chance of this being genuine. The other part knew it to be true.

  Why else does a well dressed stranger present such a thing to an awkward nobody in a secluded house in a small town in Maryland? Some things are so improbable that they can be only the truth.

  He plucked an old, stale candy from the lamp stand beside his grandfather’s desk and popped it in his mouth. He felt his grandfather here, with him, even though he’d been long dead. This was still his house, as far as Max was concerned, and the only place he felt comfortable. He spent the summers here, away from his own family. Undisturbed save for the occasional visits of his grandmother when she wasn’t travelling. A regal picture of smiling, confident Admiral Haulden sat upon the desk in front of Max. He wished he’d known his grandfather.

  The folder had spoken of serving one’s country. He would become bigger than himself. He would cease to be Max, and become Team Blue, should he accept his charge. He stood and slowly walked over to where the folder and its contents lay scattered up against the base of the wall. Then he began to pick them up.

  His entire life he’d assumed he was just an afterthought. The only one in a long line of Haulden men that sought something other than the military, some different way to make his mark.

  He shuffled the folder back together and stared at it headlong. Was this his key? Was this his shot at immortalit
y?

  ————

  The folder tumbled about Ellie’s mind all the next day. She refused to believe it, was angry for giving even passing credence to what it held, and yet some part of her refused again to reject it. She was befuddled and apart from the world around her, as if she was locked away behind glass.

  She threaded the cars in the lot on her way inside, running her fingers absently across the dusted accumulations of snow here and there. It puffed away before her like stage fluff. She threaded through the people in the hallway. The school had a strange, caged intensity. A hum amplified by the winter weather, but brought about by something else. Blue was everywhere: Blue ribbons tied to backpacks, blue streaks in hair. Blue wristlets and blue markers used to draw blue doodles on arms and legs and even on clothing. A school that couldn’t muster a quarter full stadium for a home football game was suddenly a united student body—but for what? From the safety of their doorways, teachers watched the crossing periods in exasperation, but even some of them wore blue, as lapel pins or earrings or on garish neckties brought out from the backs of closets and slap-dusted in the early morning hours.

  As Ellie walked through her waking dream, she heard of other teams. The Tournament lore was growing, or perhaps she was just noticing it for the first time. It was as if a sinister rainbow had sprung to life and spanned the globe. They are Red, we are Blue. They are Green, we are Blue. Ellie walked past where Tamara leaned against the lockers; she wore sparkling blue eyeliner and looked like a whorish dragon. Ellie recognized several others from her ill-fated attempt to join the party last night. Tom Elrey stood with a group of guys wearing blue bandanas around their biceps, and she knew he saw her, but he wouldn’t look. It seemed so long ago, steeling herself in her room, walking up the steps to Tamara’s front door and barging in. Trifling now. A part of her was embarrassed, but a part of her had a folder inside a drawer in her desk at home, and that part, although small and skeptical, was strong.