The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  Claudia sighed. Lock sat back down on the couch and slapped his thighs in frustration.

  “We told you our names,” Lock said, as slowly as he was able. “We need to ask you about—”

  “Is that your daughter, Harry?” Frank asked. He pointed at a small framed photograph on the wall of a young girl dressed in a frilly polka dot dress, her tawny blonde hair cut in a bowl shape. She was formally posed, as for a school photograph, but she smiled sincerely. The color was faded; even the frame was sun-bleached.

  Harry lit up. “Anna.” As he gazed at the picture the creases in his eyes betrayed him. His smile was rooted in sorrow. “She was beautiful. Did you know her?”

  “No sir,” Frank said, not skipping a beat. “But I wish that I had. She looks like a great kid.”

  “She was. And you’d have loved her if you knew her. She had that gift.” Harry’s eyes became crystal clear for the first time and Frank moved over to him.

  “Harry, why are you here? You’re an American.”

  Harry sat back again and settled his mesh shorts about him on his recliner. He moved his feet about in his sandals like a child. Frank didn’t need to know the details to understand the story, even before Harry spoke a word.

  “Flu,” he said, the word like a sharp cough. “Such a stupid thing. As common as a cold, but she just stopped breathing. She was five. When she died, so did the marriage. Sometimes children are the only thing holding a relationship together.” He spoke as if he’d said this to himself in the mirror over and over again. “Then State fired me, and I had nothing. Matter of months. All gone.”

  “State? As in the Department of State?” chimed Lock.

  Frank waved him off. “So you came here,” he nodded.

  Harry took a slug of whisky and then a long pull of water, draining nearly half the glass. “I have to have water with my whisky now,” he said, looking sheepishly at all three of them. “My stomach isn’t what it used to be.”

  Harry watched the blank television again, but Frank could tell that he was still with them, just preparing his words.

  “I risked everything for him,” Harry said after a moment.

  “For who?”

  “Pollix. Pollix Mazaryk,” said Harry, and both Frank and Lock knew that they’d broken down a wall. It was as audible to them as the sound of slipping steel, as if they’d pulled a padlock open and flicked it off of a door.

  “Pollix Mazaryk,” Lock said, an incantation on his lips. “And he ruined you? You risked your career for him and he ruined it, didn’t he?”

  “Ruined?” Harry repeated, his eyebrows perked. “No! He saved my life. Gave me a home when everyone turned from me. He gave me this,” Harry said, holding out his hands at the room. “It may not seem like much, but it is plenty for me.” He struggled to his feet and moved over to the picture. “Pollix was like a brother to me. We shared so much.”

  “Why did the Department of State fire you, Harry?” Frank asked gently.

  “Because I agreed with Pollix. I liked his idea.”

  “What was his idea?”

  “The Tournament, of course! Although back then it didn’t have a name.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Claudia. Her head was tilted down, but she watched them carefully over the top of her brow. Lock closed his eyes and nodded slowly to himself. “He created it,” Lock said. “He made it.”

  “No,” Harry said quickly. “No. He failed. We failed.”

  “...But Harry,” Frank coaxed, “the Tournament exists. It’s happening in our time too.”

  “This thing?” Harry spat, tossing a hand towards the window and the expanse of the city beyond. “This is not what Pollix wanted. Not what I wanted. Not what I lost my career for.” He turned back to the picture of Anna and softened again.

  “What did Pollix want?” Lock asked, his voice dry.

  “He wanted to grow old with his family, same as me,” Harry said, straining to bring the picture down from the wall and then tucking it under his arm. “He brought twenty-five of us to that house. Twenty-five nations. Can you imagine how much work that was? What he sacrificed? And all he got in the end was eight. I remember that much.” He sat down, bracing himself on the armrests. “It wasn’t enough.” He placed the picture on his lap and set a hand on it but didn’t look at it. His eyes were watery.

  Lock stood. “Twenty-five countries? What countries? Why did the others back out?”

  Harry’s eyes continued to pool and he ran a blind thumb against the wooden frame on his lap.

  “Pollix gave you this place. He cared for you,” Frank said, ignoring Lock.

  “Yes. Because I believed in him. The US was one of the eight, until it crumbled. I was fired to save face. When everything fell apart for me he helped me as long as he could. It’s strange. I’ve forgotten everything about what happened at that house. About what people said and why. Heads of State. Powerful men at tables, tallying, bartering, maneuvering, trying to change the world. All gone.” He made a motion like pulling a string from his head. “I’m forgetting things more and more. I let those memories fade away because I want to spend all that I have left inside my head remembering my daughter.” He let his gaze fall to the picture. “I can just barely do it. I start with her laugh.” He looked up again. “Her laugh will be some time yet leaving me. But when it does, I don’t want to wake up again.”

  Lock sat down with the weight of Harry’s words. Claudia seemed to shrink into the corner. Frank lost himself in the picture, trying to hear Anna’s laugh.

  “Pollix was the same way with his children. He had his own tragedies.”

  “Children?” Lock asked. “He had more than one?”

  “Three,” Harry said, smiling. “They’re hard to forget. Suzette, and Edward, and ... and Dahlia. Dahlia was like my Anna.” At the mention of this last name his face fell and his eyes clouded. He looked puzzled, as if he felt an unsourced sadness hanging phantom in the air.

  “Eddie Mazaryk has sisters,” Frank said dumbly. “Unbelievable.”

  “Dahlia,” Harry said, struggling up once more. Frank grabbed the picture as it slid off Harry’s knees. “She used to visit me here.” Harry became agitated, almost frightened. He looked back up at the wall where the picture of Anna had hung and became distressed at finding it empty.

  “It’s right here,” Frank said. “See? I have it right here.”

  Harry took it with knobby, grasping fingers and looked at the three of them as if they were strangers. Then he closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were heavy and lidded. “I was just going to take a rest.”

  Frank clasped his arm and led him to a small single bed, elevated at the head.

  Lock moved over to Claudia and spoke in whispers. “The desk clerk should have a record of all of his visitors, right? If she visited him she could still be in the city.”

  Claudia nodded blankly, still watching Harry and chewing on the edge of her thumbnail.

  “Frank, let the man sleep,” Lock said, trying to temper his voice. “We gotta move quickly on this. This could be it, man. The story that gives us an edge over the Black House.”

  Frank nodded but saw that Harry was tucked in first. “Harry,” he whispered. “Harry, thank you.”

  Harry opened his eyes and looked up at Frank. “Oh,” he said. “Niet adriens, Niet adriens. No thank you. No thank you.” He trailed off into a mumble, and then fell into a steady sleep. Frank stood slowly, but before he turned to leave, he positioned the picture of Anna on the bedside table next to him, so it would be the first thing he saw when he woke up.

  Chapter Twelve

  SARAH WALCOTT WAS READING her own story.

  It was surreal to have her night with John Northern pieced together by the tabloids. Sort of like wandering into the common room after a big night out and hashing together the memories with your roommates. But your roommates were syndicated columnists and your common room was a gossip rag sold in supermarkets nationwide. As for her real roommates,
they were gone. Her real common room was empty.

  The cover story was “The Last Night of Team Blue” and it was split into three parts, one for each member of the doomed team. Northern’s was the longest. There was a picture of him at the top, a still frame from one of the many videos and pictures uploaded since his identity broke. Underneath his collar, in big offset letters, were the words After the meal, they left together and stayed with each other all night long...

  Underneath those words was a little picture of her. A bad one. It was the headshot from her UCSD student ID card, the one she’d neglected to update since her sophomore year. There it was, on page three, along with an account of her dinner date. Clearly the magazine took liberties. The story was peppered with ludicrous anecdotes from someone who claimed to have waited on them, and from the hostess that night, saying things such as “They were within inches of each other the whole time,” and insinuating that they even went into the bathroom together at some point.

  Her roommates’ conspicuous absence of late became clear in the next paragraph, where both Annie and Jessica were quoted as saying that they left the apartment so that Northern could stay the night. They rehashed the conversations the three had the next morning where apparently Sarah had told them Northern was “fabulous.” Sarah didn’t remember saying “fabulous.” Sarah wasn’t the type of girl to use the word “fabulous.” In fact, she remembered the conversation as awkward, since she had to explain why the man had up and left in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.

  From there the article followed Northern with equal sensationalism through a visit to the wounded Nikkie Hix at a nearby hotel, where it’s insinuated that he slept with her too, and then on to the infamous Chula Vista shipping docks where he’d died along with her in a spectacular shootout. The last line was “It seems he died as fast and as loose as he lived, and all before we even knew his name.”

  At first Sarah laughed, then she felt creeping nausea and barely stopped herself from retching on the couch. She rolled up the magazine and threw it in the trash. Tabloids detailing your one night stand rank highly on the list of things that should not be on the coffee table when your dad comes over, and he was due at any minute. As she pushed it down to the bottom of the bin she guessed that he’d already seen it, or at least been told about it. No doubt it was part of the reason he was coming over. That and the fact that there were now five photographers camped across the street from her apartment building. Funny how being in the headlines coincided with being just about the loneliest she’d ever felt.

  She didn’t know what to do. Everything was escalating so quickly, so when her dad called and said he was coming to get her she’d agreed immediately. She’d never before wanted to run to her mom and dad so badly, although she didn’t know what she thought they could do to make any of this go away. Nonetheless, when the doorbell rang she was so relieved that she ran to the door anyway. She almost flicked the bolt without looking, stopping herself at the last minute, her father’s last words over the phone ringing in her mind: “Don’t open the door for anyone but me.”

  She checked perfunctorily through the peep hole.

  The man standing there wasn’t her father. It was an Asian man dressed in a tan field jacket and jade cargo pants tucked into heavy black combat boots. This was no pesky reporter. Real fear settled upon her and overrode everything else, like a single hard swipe across a dinner table. The realization hit her hard: This man meant her harm.

  She backed away from the locked door, stepping lightly, wincing at every crack in the floorboards. She threaded through their kitchen and to the back door. The fire escape there could take her to the street level. There would be reporters there, but Sarah didn’t care. She’d take them over the guy out front any day. She looked out of the inset window and, seeing nobody, opened the back door with a slow, soft creak. In an instant a man’s hand, balled into a tight, blocking fist, shot through the opening. He was quick. He sprang up from a crouched position and firmly pushed his way inside. Sarah screamed and swung at him but he batted her hand away and snatched it in one fluid motion. He spun her around like a dancing partner and clamped his full hand over her mouth, securing and silencing her as surely as if he’d thrown her into a trunk. She bit the flesh of his palm and tasted blood, but the man never moved or made a sound.

  A second man entered through the back door and closed it behind him. He moved deftly past her and to the front door and she heard him open it as well, then close it and lock it. All of them looked identical in their uniforms. Her captor easily pulled her back through the kitchen and into the living room where the other two stood waiting. One ripped a strip of duct tape from a roll and held it taut. Her mouth was freed for a split second then sealed with the tape. She bucked and slammed her head against the man’s chest until she made herself dizzy, but his grip was sure.

  She was turned and presented to the man who stood a hair taller than the other two. Sarah could tell he was the leader. He had the subtly frayed look of a man who is burdened by great responsibility but works hard not to show it. She screamed at him through the tape but it was like yelling underwater. She tried to shove backwards to gain leverage but couldn’t break her confinement. Then the leader slapped her across the face.

  The blow stung her on every level. She hated that she started to cry. She hated that these strange men, these violators, saw her cry. She hated that she could do nothing. Her nose became constricted with snot and she had trouble breathing. None of them cared. The leader appraised her like one might an unruly animal. The others were watchful and blank, like birds. She forced herself to slow her breathing, tipping her head back to ease the pressure on her nose and found that she could breathe.

  The leader stepped forward. “My name is Qui. I am the captain of Team Jade.” His English was precise and clinical, like he was delivering a report. “We will wait for your father.”

  New dread spilled over Sarah. Her mistakes should be her own. The repercussions of her choices should be borne by her alone, not her father. Her weary, graying, stooped father. She let out a muffled moan.

  “Sit,” Qui said.

  The next ten minutes passed in complete silence. She was physically pressed upon the couch in a seated position by one of the men who placed his hands upon her shoulders in a grim parody of a portrait. The three men watched the door in stillness, absorbed, as if it was a painting. Then came a knock. She tried to scream a warning, but only muffled madness came out, sounds that might be mistaken for a television in the background. Qui stood and walked to the door and swung it open. Baxter Walcott looked only momentarily confused. When he saw his daughter on the couch everything became clear.

  Sarah thought he would break down: he looked so frail already, swimming in his old suit jacket, a raspy, three day growth of white beard on his face and tracking down his neck. She thought he would beg or cry. Instead, he looked directly at Qui, who stood impassively by, allowing Walcott to take in the full measure of the situation.

  When Walcott spoke his voice was hard and flat. “If you hurt her in any way you will get nothing from me. Nothing at all.”

  Sarah blinked. Nothing from him?

  Qui opened his jacket a fraction to reveal his gun, but made no move to grab it. “We already have the diode. All we need is the polarization formula.” He struggled over the word. “You have it, correct?”

  A bitter mix of relief and embarrassment hit Sarah. Of course they were after her father. Not everyone cared about who screwed Northern and vice versa. These three wanted to get in on the game, and they were using her as leverage.

  “I have it. Let her go and I will give it to you.”

  Qui regarded him just as he had the door moments before.

  “You are lying. You do not have it. You were seeking to take your daughter into hiding, and would not carry it on you. Do not lie to me, or I will hurt your daughter.”

  The way he spoke was divorced from his threat. There was no animosity in his tone, only in his
meaning. “I ask again,” Qui said, “Do you have the formula?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now we begin to understand each other. Can you get the formula?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “At the hospital where I work. Not far from here.”

  “You will take us there now.”

  “Let her go,” Baxter insisted. “I will take you there, alone.”

  Qui looked at him, puzzled. “Have we stopped understanding each other, doctor?” He took his gun, a heavy, black weight, from his holster at his ribs and pressed it against Sarah’s head. Sarah winced, but did not cry out. It felt like a gloved finger pressing against her temple.

  “No!” cried Walcott. “We understand! I understand.”

  “Good. To assure that we still understand each other, my men will follow you downstairs to your car. You will bring your car to the back stairs. I will bring your daughter down the back stairs. You will take us to the hospital.” He tightened his grip on the gun, moving his trigger hand ever so slightly, like a creature settling on the ocean floor. Sarah winced.

  “All right,” Walcott said, holding up his hands. “All right. I’ll get the car.”

  Qui gave a clipped nod to Xiang and Guo and they stepped in front of and behind Walcott as the three of them walked to the door. Before they left Qui stopped them with a barking command, after which Guo took out his gun and pressed it close to Walcott’s back.

  “I don’t think you will call for help, doctor,” Qui said, and it sounded like a genuine compliment. “But know that if you do, both of you will suffer.” He finished with a slight dip of his head. Walcott was reminded of an old photograph he’d once seen of a Civil War officer, his head turned to the side, one hand tucked between the buttons of his coat.

  “We’ll get through this,” he said to Sarah, nodding encouragement. Then he was prodded out of the door, and Sarah was left alone with Qui.

  Qui didn’t speak during this time. His breathing was even, rhythmic, as if he was recharging himself in conscious meditation. Sarah couldn’t help but regard her father. Something had changed in him. From the outside he looked as creased as ever, but his eyes told a different story. They were sharp. Angry. She expected him to beg for her safety. She was wrong. He was going to try to maneuver their way out of this.