The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  Claudia flashed cold, then hot. She climbed the rest of the stairs ashen faced. At the top, three of the four captains watched her. Alex Auldborne was conspicuously absent. He often went out on behalf of the Black House and carnage usually followed in his wake. Mazaryk nodded briefly at her.

  Claudia made her excuses in Russian. “I’m sorry. I was only—”

  “It’s fine,” Mazaryk said, responding in kind. “No one need be killed for being curious.” Then he switched to English once more. “Speak freely. We are all one here.”

  Claudia drew herself up. “Allen Lockton and Frank Youngsmith were my responsibility.”

  Mazaryk ran a fingernail across a small piece of the wooden table, nodding. Claudia knew it was best just to be out with it.

  “I think they’re going to find Dahlia.”

  ————

  “This can’t be right,” Lock said.

  “It’s right,” said Frank. “Claudia said any cabbie would know it. The guy took us here no questions asked.”

  “But the address was Novodevichiy 1275. This is just... just Novodevichiy.”

  “This is the only Novodevichiy. This is it.”

  Frank read the name with some difficulty from a large arcing concrete slab where it looked to have been hammered a century ago. They stood at the wide entrance of a cemetery. The gate was cut into a huge wall of stone that ran off to their left and right for nearly a city block and looked as though it protected a mediaeval castle.

  “Do you think she lives here?”

  “She doesn’t live here, Lock. She doesn’t live anywhere.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Lock approached a large map inset in the wall. On the map, plots were neatly laid out by row and section. He looked at his address. 1275. “Area twelve, row seventy-five,” he said, whistling like a deflated balloon. “Of course.”

  “Let’s go pay our respects,” Frank said.

  They silently walked through the cemetery, making their way to the plots in section twelve. The property was expansive and rife with huge, old trees, most of them still spindly and bare, but here and there a few were tinged with green. All around them grave markers drew their eye, obelisks of rose marble and ornate statues of glittering granite strewn with fresh roses, but also simple plaques with sad teddy bears and flags, and stone slabs newly chiseled with letters that seemed to glow. The cemetery lay in the sprawling arms of an old monastery that sat upon a hill and as the twilight came upon them its shadow lengthened over the grounds.

  Dahlia’s grave was impossible to miss. Not because it was large or ornate, but because of the headstone’s imagery, if it could even be called such. It was a sculpture, a child made of stone, clad in a thin dressing gown that seemed almost to flow. She was draped backwards in the embrace of a majestic embodiment of death: a skeleton with bones of stone that held her carefully, skull dipped over her, delicately touching her forehead. Death had wings like an eagle that curled around both of them, enveloping the embrace. At the square base of the grave marker the name Dahlia Mazyrksimov was cleanly chiseled, and next to that the dates: 1974-1984.

  Lock had worked up a good deal of resentment as they walked to her grave. How could Dahlia offer any insight if she was dead? But when he saw the depiction of her in death’s embrace, with her eyes closed, her lips as small as the leaf on a flower’s stem, all was wiped from his mind. There was no malice in the embrace, or in the kiss. There couldn’t be. The sculpture possessed a beauty both devastating and matter of fact.

  “Ten years old,” Frank said, walking around the wings of Death with his hands clasped behind him. “And she died in 1984. Obviously she wasn’t the one visiting Harry Jessop.”

  Lock was quiet long enough that Frank looked up to see if he’d been listening, and he had, but he was also listening to the wind that cut through the graveyard, and as the night fell it whispered to him of his failure. He almost turned from the grave then, away from everything. But then he saw the light, and with it, just maybe, a chance to open another door.

  Between the child and Death was a small space where Death’s wings formed a hollow out of the wind. Now that it was truly night, Lock could see a flickering light. Frank followed his line of sight and again walked around to the front of the grave.

  “It’s a candle,” Frank said, creaking over to get a better look.

  “Who would keep a candle burning here?” Lock asked, running his thumb along his lip. He walked up next to Frank, the two of them like wanderers huddled over a lantern.

  “You don’t think that Eddie was the Mazyrksimov visiting Harry Jessop every month, do you?”

  “Maybe. That was my first thought as well. But I’d be willing to bet whoever visits Harry also sets this candle out every night. Harry and Dahlia are connected, and something about the routine strikes me as similar.”

  “Every night?”

  “There’s wax all over the hollow here. This isn’t the first candle, not by far. This is a daily vigil from somebody on Dahlia’s behalf.”

  “It’s guttering. Almost ready to go out.”

  “And somebody’s gonna replace it,” Lock said. “Let’s wait.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “SO THAT’S WHERE WE STAND,” Ellie said.

  “You’re on your way to Mexico now?” asked Greer.

  “Yes. We’re on the plane. All six of us...”

  “But...”

  “But none of us has any real idea what we’re doing. Least of all me. And it shows. They don’t trust us.”

  “Why should they? You have the same cause at the moment, that’s all. But that’s enough.”

  “Are your two men in Moscow making any progress? Any intel that we could use?”

  “They have a lead, but it’s not much. You shouldn’t count on them. Count on yourself.”

  “Greer, I need something to work with here. Anything to help these teams go along with this.”

  “I know you want me to tell you that the recruiters found some sort of hero’s blood in your lineage, or that Frank and Lock found out Mazaryk is allergic to silver bullets, but I can’t. I don’t know where you came from, and we may not know how to bring down the Black House by the time you have to move against it. That’s the reality.”

  “Well the reality terrifies me.”

  “Reality can be terrifying. As for the other teams, worry about who or who isn’t by your side when the time comes to make a stand. Until then, just keep moving forward.”

  ————

  The Santa Maria municipal park was the site of a battle between the English of Team Grey and the Mexicans of Team White in the first round of the Tournament’s fifth cycle. The fight went badly for White and in Tournament lore was known as The Battle of Blood Hand because Auldborne had marked the front door of the Vega house with a bloody handprint. At the time, the park had a dirt floor and a flaking wooden play set. While the Vega household had always been tidy, many of the houses around it then were vacant and falling into disrepair. As far as a new neighborhood went, Santa Maria didn’t exactly take off right out of the gate. But all of that changed once it became known that the captain of White lived there in modest ranch home with his brother Miguel and his family.

  When Gamers and press began arriving in groups and cast a spotlight on the area, the city government cleaned the entire development from top to bottom. There was now grass sod on the park grounds and the slides and swings were brand new and up to code. A few wealthy real estate prospectors snatched up two of the nearby empty lots and turned them into base camps for the Gamer faithful, spots where they could stay or camp or gas up all while purchasing Tournament souvenirs and listening to the growing lore of Team White and the Tournament in general. White’s administration, on the nimble advice of Diego Vega himself, had purchased all of the lots adjacent to their own home and done a quick demolition to build a surrounding fence. This way they achieved a modest buffer between their home and the waves of sightseers.

  When the Americans and Fre
nch arrived in two black Suburbans they were expected by everyone, from the team inside the compound to the thousands held behind rows of wooden hobby horses in the tourist lots. The cars were allowed instant passage to the front of the gate and were barraged with calls and questions as they opened the doors:

  “Ellie are you building an alliance? Are you and France one team now?”

  Ellie put her head down and walked forward. Answering one question only brought more.

  “Ellie are you and Yves an item?”

  Yves smiled at this, all while shaking his head to ward off questions posed by the French press.

  “Ellie have you spoken to your parents since you set off?”

  Ellie tried to remain inscrutable, although the truth was that she hadn’t spoken to her parents in nearly a month. Better put, her parents hadn’t spoken to her. She’d called many times, and every time she got the machine. She let them know she was okay, but that was all she felt comfortable leaving on an answering machine. Her parents viewed her involvement in the Tournament as betrayal of the life they were sure she was going to have. A life they had prepared for her, in which she followed her sister to college and got a marketable degree, moved back to Cheyenne and found an upwardly mobile job, spent her time and paid her dues and retired next to them. They took great pride in setting the table of life for her, and she’d gone and whipped the cloth out from under it and sent everything tumbling away. Cy saw that this line of questioning had hit a nerve with his captain and so he stepped up and behind her to cut the press line of sight. Instead the reporters latched on to him.

  “Cy, is it true you were engaged to be married?”

  “Back off,” Cy said, turning his head slightly. Tom looked up at him and then to Ellie, his face drawn.

  “What happened to Troya? Did you cancel the engagement?”

  Cy stopped in his tracks, stunned at the mention of her name.

  “Is it because of the Tournament, or did you ever love her?” the reporter pressed, pushing himself towards the front of the cordon now that he knew his trawling had snagged a prize.

  “Cy...” Tom cautioned. The questions became more pressing. Troya’s name was thrown around the crowd like a beach ball, followed by cries and gasps as Cy pulled his gun out and approached the reporter who first spoke to him.

  “What did I tell you?” Cy asked him, deadly calm. The hard glaze that settled over his eyes back in the supermarket parking lot had returned. Ellie pressed towards him as the reporter stammered and the flashbulbs blazed.

  “What did I tell you?” Cy asked again.

  “I... you said—”

  Cy cocked back the hammer on his gun and set his stance a shoulder width apart. He leveled the gun at the reporter’s head. The French watched him gravely but made no move. Ellie slowed herself as she reached Cy and when Tom tried to step in she softly touched his shoulder to still him.

  “You said to back off,” the reporter stammered.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry. Please—”

  “No you’re not. You want to get closer?” He grabbed the man with his free hand and pulled him over the barrier like a farm animal. His face inches from the reporter, almost hugging him, Cy whispered “How’s this?” and then pressed his gun’s barrel into the soft flesh of the man’s temple. The reporter struggled to escape but Cy held him fast, pressing all the harder.

  “Do you want to walk out of here?” Cy whispered.

  “Yes,” the reporter mewled.

  Cy threw him to the ground against the barrier.

  “Then stay back,” he said clearly, evenly. “All of you.”

  The reporter scampered back. There were no more questions. As the six walked up to the gate, the crowd hushed. The French spoke softly to themselves and kept a careful eye on Cy, who panned the reporters like a prison guard making the rounds.

  “One of these days he’s going to kill someone,” Tom whispered aside to Ellie. “Why did you stop me? He’s getting worse.”

  Ellie made sure Cy was out of earshot. “We need to look like a team here. I need to look like I can control my striker, even if I can’t. The last thing we need is for him to snap at one of us.”

  “He’s lost it. There’s only one thing that’s gonna bring him back, and you know who she is.”

  The door to the Vega house was repainted and the rocking chair that gave Diego such joy was no longer on the porch. Otherwise, the house was unchanged, although it was surrounded by four other houses also behind the fence line that were in various states of demolition and reconstruction.

  “So, this is it,” Yves said, shading his eyes from the sun. “They are still here, even after being beaten in their own home.”

  “Admirable,” Ellie said.

  “Or stubborn.”

  Ellie stepped up to the gate and felt the eyes upon her back as surely as if each was a coin dropped on her shoulders. She rang the bell and waited. No answer. She continued to wait, longer than necessary, until Tom stepped up and rang the bell again. Yves crossed his hands over his chest and tapped his fingers at his sides.

  “Diego!” Ellie yelled, willing her voice not to crack in front of the multitudes behind them. “We just want to talk!”

  A hot breeze blew over them, stirring the dust at the construction sites. Somewhere a tarp flapped about in the wind before settling. She thought she heard snickering from somewhere in the ranks behind her but refused to turn around.

  “We could break in,” Dominique suggested.

  “We’re not breaking in for Chrissake. Diego! I know you can hear me!” Ellie’s voice gained in volume, and all wavering left it. She gripped the gate and braced herself to shake it down if that’s what it took to get White’s attention when the infamous front door in the distance opened. A man stepped outside, a thin man, tanned golden brown. He wore a fitted short sleeved polo tucked into creased linen slacks that fluttered at the cuffs. He watched them with shrewd eyes, darkened under a prominent brow. He walked deliberately forward to the gate under a hail of flashes. Once there he stopped and placed his hands together in front of him.

  “Hello, Ms. Willmore,” he said, his English barely accented. “I am Ortiz, Diego’s sweeper,” he said, wasting no time. “We know why you are here. I must tell you that Diego’s answer will be no.” He nodded calmly at the truth of his own words like a minister or a eulogist and leaned back on his heels slightly.

  Ellie found that she had been expecting a no, and so while Pyper’s refusal, and Ian’s by association, had hit her right in the gut, his words merely glanced off her, like taking a stick to the broadside of the shoulder. What she dreaded was turning around to face the crowd in defeat. She’d heard Ortiz was a gentleman, and that a certain chivalry lingered with White when it seemed to be disappearing everywhere else.

  “Can we at least come in?” Ellie asked. “We’ve traveled all day.”

  “His answer is no.”

  “You’d turn us away without even a thought? We crossed an ocean to get here.”

  Ortiz paused and took a steadying breath. He knew he was being played, but he, too, had come to know the persistent, draining effect of the camera’s eye in the past months. He understood how weary the six of them must be.

  “A moment only, to gather yourselves. Then you must be on your way.”

  Ortiz looked behind him and nodded towards the house. The gate clicked and swung slowly open as Ortiz backed out of the way, and in that same moment three strangers leapt the cordon. Ortiz saw them immediately and the glint in his eye and half-formed question on his lips caused all six of them to turn as one. Two large blonde men and one tall woman, dressed all in black, were closing quickly on the group, running in a single file line at the crest of the crowd’s collective scream.

  “Liars!” Ortiz screamed. “You betrayed me. You betrayed us!”

  “Wait!” Ellie pleaded, and the confusion on her face was so genuine that Ortiz afforded himself a pause when aiming for her although it flew
against every ounce of experience he’d achieved in his position. That pause was all she got. He pulled his gun from a holster on his lower back and sighted at her and fired. Only a quick, dashing cut from Cy saved her. He hit Ortiz’s gun arm like a swinging door and the shot went wide.

  “This isn’t our fault!” Cy yelled.

  Then the Germans were upon them and they brought gunfire with them. The three French drew as one and all of them fired upon Falco, the first in line, pummeling him in the chest, but he ran through the hits, taking them as a shield for his brother and for Astrid behind him. The three sprinted towards the closing gate, where Ortiz still wrestled with Cy. Falco screamed in rage and pain but his face was set in steel like the grill of a barreling locomotive and he kept moving. He knew only his momentum was keeping him upright.

  “They don’t want us! They want Vega!” Yves screamed to his brothers.

  “Well they got us!” Dominique replied. In his periphery he saw Ellie standing between the Germans and the front door. They’d cut their two teams in half, Silver on one side of them and Blue on the other. He fired once at the train but the Germans were already too close and he was forced pull up or risk hitting their own group.

  “He’s gonna run her down!” Dominique yelled. Tristan took a swipe at Astrid as she passed but she blocked with an expert tapering of her arm, yanking him off balance as she ran, never breaking stride.

  Tom Elrey had thrown himself upon the flailing mass, trying to keep Ortiz from shooting Cy, but he turned when Dominique yelled and he saw Ellie in their path fumbling for her gun, even as Falco Krueger, blind with pain, took aim upon her. In a split second he would pass them and run Ellie over like a stagecoach. He pivoted and turned his gun on Falco, waited for one excruciatingly long heartbeat for a safe shot, then fired. Falco dropped like heart-shot elk. His brother was right behind him, but Tom managed to trip him with a sweeping kick and then fell upon him. Felix Krueger threw him off with ease, but Tom scrambled around again and pulled him back down by the arm.