The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “No,” Lock said, carefully putting on his jacket. The bruising on his chest was so bad it hurt him to lie down and decompress. He’d been trying to sleep in a chair, unsuccessfully.

  “Look, maybe we should take a breather tonight. I know that your chest is killing you.”

  “The teams have been coming at night. So that’s when we’ll be in the park.”

  “Lock, when was the last time you really slept?”

  “Before I met you.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. Put on your coat.”

  ————

  Over the course of the week the tailgating atmosphere had steadily been replaced by the rising sense that Moscow was on news alert. As the exhausted revelers slowly trickled out, the news cameras trickled in and held their ground. It was as though the networks were outside of the courthouse of a major trial; they ringed the mansion like glowing algae, lights popping on and off as the field reporters were called upon to deliver brief, live updates. In the meantime they waited like everyone else.

  As Frank and Lock walked up to their customary place by the generator, they saw that the scene hadn’t changed. Three torches still burned brightly in their sconces above the archway and it was easy to see now in the flickering relief that five more loomed in darkness. The flame from the most recent lighting occasionally flicked over towards the darkened sconce next to it, as if it longed to set them all alight like dominos.

  “Eight sconces on the wall, and eight Tournament teams,” Lock said, shaking his head in wonder. “How long do you think they stood dark before all of this happened?”

  Frank shrugged. “The copper in the fixtures has bled down the wall. See? Even if they weren’t built with the mansion itself a lifetime ago, I’d say they’re decades old at least.”

  “How could Mazaryk have known? He can’t have put them there himself.”

  “Maybe he got lucky, you know? Like he found the perfect house, move-in ready. Happened to have eight sconces above the front door.”

  “No. Mazaryk doesn’t believe in luck.”

  Just then a shouting sound was carried over the cold winter air. It was getting louder, and yet it sounded different from when the other teams had arrived—more hostile. It came from behind them, back and towards the middle of the park. Frank and Lock stood on their toes and caught a glimpse of what looked like a roving street fight. Two enormous men had formed a protective circle around a slender woman and were slowly moving it, forcefully when necessary, right towards where Lock and Frank stood.

  “Oh Christ,” Frank said. “Time to go. Chop chop.”

  “No,” Lock said, watching the trio evenly. “No, I don’t recognize these three.”

  “All the more reason to giddyup then. Come on!”

  “They don’t look like they were invited.”

  The trio inched ever closer. The two men were at least a foot taller than everyone around them, and easily a hand span broader about the shoulders. They both wore tight black jackets, emblazoned down their right sides with stripes of red and gold. They could be easily heard as they methodically removed everyone within their radius; they were speaking German to each other, and to those they swept out of their way.

  When they came within ten feet of Frank and Lock, the woman in the middle stopped her march and stared directly at them. She was a tall, thin blonde, her hair braided into a single, thick rope that fell down to her middle back. She wore skin tight leather pants that glimmered in the floodlights in the park, and laced combat boots that reached mid-calf. Her black leather jacket was bulky and covered with zippers of all lengths and shapes. She wore black round sunglasses perched high upon her nose, but the two could tell that her face was beautiful, finely cut and proudly held. She had a small spattering of red on her cheek, either blood or a birthmark. Frank was inclined to believe the former. While she cleared her throat, the two men prowled the perimeter with teeth bared and knuckles raw.

  “Ah,” she said, her voice ringing loud and clear. “Herr Lock-ton unt Herr Young-schmidt. Right where mein people said you would be.” She smiled wickedly. Frank and Lock suddenly found themselves decidedly alone where they stood.

  “What fresh hell is this?” Frank muttered, but he stood a touch taller.

  “We don’t know you,” Lock said, with much more confidence than he felt.

  “No,” she said. “You wouldn’t. Not yet.”

  “There is no German team.”

  “There was no German team. There is now. I am Astrid. These men are the brothers Falco unt Felix. We call ourselves Team Amber.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “On our own,” she said, still smiling. “On the authority we earned when we stood up and took it.”

  Frank surprised himself by speaking up: “The others came through brandishing keys. You had to beat your way through. They aren’t expecting you.”

  “Oh, I am quite sure that Black is expecting us,” she smirked. “If what I know of them is true. You are correct, though. We were not invited, but we will be taken in and given the shot. We just wanted to make the introductions. Guten Abend, meine Herren. I’m sure we will be seeing you soon.”

  She flashed one last smile before turning on her heels and barking a command to the brothers. They continued to cleave their way forward through the crowd until they hit the front gate, and everyone watched in dread silence as Astrid pressed the button for the bell and waited. The silence lengthened and Frank turned to Lock with a smirk, about to speak, but Astrid cut him short with a sharp signal to the brothers who assembled side by side, took a step back, and then began to systematically heel-kick the gate door in alternating time. The booming echoes of their strikes and the rattle of the iron reverberated throughout the park. Several of the crowd gasped, already scrambling back.

  “Uh oh,” Frank said. “Brander isn’t gonna like that.”

  When the door to the house swung open, the brothers stopped kicking. When Brander walked out the park went silent, save for the murmuring of the news crews. When he swiftly leveled his massive handgun through the bars and at the nearest brother, people began to scream.

  “He wouldn’t,” Lock said. “Not in front of the whole world.”

  But he did. With a terrific blast Brander shot Felix cleanly in the chest with a diode. The big German snapped backwards as surely as if he’d been clothes-lined. He collapsed in an arch and writhed on the ground. The crowd erupted in a wave of frightened hooting and everyone nearby shoved back from the gate as if they’d just discovered that the lion can reach through the bars—everyone except for the self-proclaimed Team Amber. Astrid held her ground and looked coldly through the bars back at Brander, who had taken aim at her and peeled his lips back from his teeth in a silent snarl. She squared herself and tilted her head back slightly to take in the full size of the Russian striker, still nearly a foot taller than even Falco or Felix.

  When Falco moved to help his brother, Astrid barked an order at him and he paused. She spoke to him again, softer this time, and he moved back to her side, squaring himself. Frank and Lock could clearly hear him speak to his brother, his tone forceful. Felix writhed briefly on the ground, but made no noise. Falco spoke again, abruptly, and with emphasis this time. Then Felix sat up. The crowd tittered.

  Frank’s mouth fell open. “No. Way.”

  Astrid spoke directly to Felix, although she never stopped staring at Brander and the gun. Slowly Felix rose to his feet. He shook his head. The crowd jumped back again. Felix cracked his neck to either side and then squared up next to his brother. After one steadying step, he stood tall, although he seemed to be fighting for it.

  “We get shot like that, we wake up face first in a ditch half a day later. He looks like he’s ready to go nine rounds.”

  Without knowing it, Lock had moved his hand to cover his bruised sternum as he watched Astrid slowly open her arms wide, as if in offering. The malice in Brander’s eyes shot clear across the park. Lock could almost hear his b
ullish breathing; it was as if he saw the red flag waving, but was held back from his charge by an even greater force. When Astrid spoke to him, too softly to carry all of the way back to where the pair stood, Brander tensed again and seemed ready to put an end to all three of them, no matter how many shots it took, but then Ales Radomir walked calmly from the stone depths, where he’d been lurking. He placed a hand on Brander’s shoulder, and it was enough. Brander snapped his gun down. Ales popped the gate and with one sharp, whipping nod he gestured them in. Astrid led both brothers, and Ales and Brander brought up the rear.

  Before he turned, Lock swore Brander looked directly at them, over the press corps and over all of the faithful right into their eyes, and it almost made Lock take a step back, but it was fleeting. Brander slammed the gate shut as he left.

  Once they’d disappeared inside and the camera flashes had subsided, the field set to loud murmuring, all eyes on the sconces above. Every camera was trained upon them. Reporters on live feed leaned to the side so that their camera crews could catch a nice shot over their shoulders.

  They waited. And waited.

  After nearly five minutes, Lock said, “They aren’t giving them a torch.”

  “Makes sense,” Frank said. “They’re the new guys.”

  “But they let them in.”

  “So they’re giving them an audience. A baby step. You said it yourself. Eight sconces, eight teams.”

  “But now it looks like there may be nine. At least.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that there were eight original teams. Even if they get the diode, they’d still be rookies. From what I gather about Black, I don’t think they would give a new guy a pot to piss in unless they proved themselves first. Much less a blazing torch on high.”

  After a half of a minute of silence, Frank noticed Lock was staring at him.

  “What?”

  “Well I’ll be. Maybe that diode jumbled your brains for the better.”

  “Nah,” Frank said, but his cheeks pinked a bit.

  “I think we’re done here, Frank.”

  “What? Really? But... no Mazaryk? We never got him.”

  “Mazaryk isn’t here.” Lock swung his messenger bag around and fished out his handheld. “He was never here.”

  Frank’s vision was constricting as he saw his window closing. He became breathless. “Look, we can find him. Just give me some more time.”

  Lock tapped out a message on his handheld, then paused and looked to the sky. “You know, it’s funny. We follow his trail half way around the world. We hitch rides on planes, cars, trucks, we hike it out on our own two feet—”

  Frank was pleading now. The crowd nearby turned to watch. “Please, Lock, we can—”

  “—We got shot for this. Shot and dumped in a ditch. And in the end, it looks like he’s coming to Greer himself.”

  Frank stood tall and brushed the rounded front of his jacket as if preparing for his last stand, but when his moment came, he was at a loss. He felt the crushing pressure returning to his shoulders once more. Now it was Lock’s turn to catch Frank looking.

  “What?”

  “This is the only thing of significance I’ve ever done. You can’t take it away from me. I’m afraid of what will be left once the dust settles.” Frank sagged and could no longer keep his gaze afloat.

  Lock cocked his head. “Take it away from you?”

  “I can’t just go home.”

  “Go home? What are you, crazy?”

  “But Mazaryk... Frank dropped his hands to his sides. “...Wait, what?”

  “Mazaryk is Greer’s problem now, God bless him,” Lock pocketed his handheld, shouldering his bag and brushing himself down as he observed those still watching them. “They’ve got to deal with the man himself. But we... we actually have to figure out who he is. In the end, I wonder who has the more dangerous assignment.” Lock tapped his lip in thought. Then he grabbed Frank by the arm and led him through the crowd, which parted easily for them. Lock spoke as he walked, and Frank focused on breathing in every moment of his reprieve. He wouldn’t be going back home tonight, at least. He had tonight. And probably tomorrow. Nobody could take that away.

  “Why were there eight teams, Frank? And why did they leave a mark on that mansion years before Mazaryk, or any of us, was born?”

  Frank stuck out his lower jaw in thought as he shuffled forward to catch Lock, already on the move again, thinking aloud. Lock held a single finger in the air, punctuating his thoughts as he spoke.

  “Ask the right questions, and we’ll get the right answers!” He walked faster, a step ahead of Frank, eager to be moving. “You can’t best a man you don’t understand. That’s where we come in. I changed our marching orders. It’s high time we figured out where this Tournament really came from.”

  They left the park behind, ignoring the calls of the press and the eyes of the crowd. Lock walked at a clip he hadn’t breached since the old days, before the fall, and his face was set in grim determination. Frank, for his part, was surely determined, but his face was far from grim. He kept to the rear because while he knew a dark unknown lay ahead of them, he also knew what lay behind—and he didn’t want Lock to see his smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MANITOBA JACK STOLE ANOTHER glance at the door after he served the last of the lunch rush customers.

  Still no sign of him. He was at least an hour late.

  He set about straightening up the bar and poured another round for two college kids who stood in the corner, where the foreigner had posted up for the past four days. He glanced at the door again and wiped down the bar a second time, cruising around baskets of brisket.

  The foreigner was a strange one. In the beginning, it was his presence that made Jack uneasy; he hunkered down in his oversized jacket, eyes downcast with a dark intensity. He was jittery, and he stayed for hours, popping his coaster up on top of his pint every twenty or so minutes to go outside for a smoke. Those first two days, when he left at four in the afternoon, on the dot, Jack had breathed a sigh of relief.

  Now, his absence made Jack nervous. And he didn’t quite know why. He’d said he was waiting for someone, and Jack felt he dreaded the meeting, like he was in a doctor’s office, not a barbeque joint.

  After another bout of pacing a regular stopped him with a tug, a ruddy faced man by the name of Cree who worked at the nearby gas station. “You all right, Jack?”

  Jack looked at him as if for the first time. He paused to let the question catch up to him. “Yeah, I’m sorry. Can I get you another beer?”

  “You know I do my two at lunch, so I ‘spose I got the one left.”

  “Right,” Jack said, popping a tap and losing himself in the pour for a moment. “Hey, lemme ask—you see a pale kid in a puffy jacket out there on your way in?”

  “Dead of winter. Lot of pale kids around here.”

  “A foreign guy,” Jack said, setting the beer down and clearing his throat to speak over the din. “You’d know him if you saw him. Got kind of an uneven shine in his eye.”

  Cree frowned. “I don’t think so. He owe you money or something?”

  Jack moved two pair of pint glasses into the ice bucket and shook his head. “No, it’s nothing, really. I just get this feeling...

  Cree moved in closer and cupped his ear. “What’s that? It’s buzzing like a beehive in here.”

  “I was just saying I get this feeling that something—”

  Abruptly, all conversation dropped to the floor like a velvet curtain. Jack stood straight. The lull lasted but a second, but everyone noticed. In the far corner a young girl giggled nervously. Then, as quickly as it had skipped track, the room snapped back again.

  Cree creaked back in his chair and grinned. “Heh. My ol’ man woulda said that was a ghost just passed by.”

  “Yeah?” Jack replied, but he wasn’t smiling. He was looking over at the spot in the corner by the window, where the young man had stood, squeezing his lighter with his left hand and eyeing
the clock. He felt strongly just then that he would never see that young man again.

  “Maybe your old man knew what he was talking about,” Jack said.

  ————

  “You were supposed to tell me the minute she got in,” Max growled as he peeked out of the drawn curtains at the hollow sunlight of a winter afternoon.

  “I was going to,” Cy whispered. “But then you called us all out on a random Thursday night and dragged us to the middle of a forest to run the gauntlet. It kind of slipped my mind!”

  Cy sat next to Troya on an old couch in the sparsely decorated living room of their house off of the Promenade. The only light was what crept around the shutters and shades, and even their whispers echoed throughout the forlorn rooms. The three of them were shoved into one corner like junkies dreading the daybreak.

  “And what’s the big deal, anyway? Everyone is just fine. You’re the only lunatic that’s shown up, as far as I can see.”

  “No, she was followed,” Max insisted. He wouldn’t even meet Troya’s eye.

  “How was I supposed to know?” Troya moaned, her voice a whisper near breaking. She sat with her head in her hands, her feet pigeon-toed.

  Cy gently picked one hand away and held it. He touched his forehead to hers and whispered, “I told you first thing you stepped through that door, and I’ll say it again and forever, there is no way you could have known, baby. This is our fight, not yours.”

  Troya shuddered and Max looked darkly at Cy.

  “What have I said from day one?” Max said. “Your fight is her fight, Cy. Everything is on the table, here. What about the term ‘no rules’ don’t you understand? Has one goddamn word I’ve said gotten through to you—”

  “What’s done is done.”

  Max shook his head and peeked out the window again. The lunch rush hour was in full swing, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  “If he’s here, if Mazaryk really is here, why did you send Ellie and TJ away? If we’ve hit the front lines we should all be running the trenches together.”