Endgame: The Calling

by James Frey

  Chiyoko looks out the window. The hills of central Turkey pass by in a tan procession. It is a beautiful country. At once barren and full. The people have been kind, as much as she has had to deal with them. The desserts in Kayseri were exquisite.

  She closes her eyes and thinks of An. He sent her an encrypted email that led her to a website. It had a black background and white type and all it said was: There is no judgment. And below this: ZIP ICE. And below this a link: .

  She clicked it, a file downloaded, and she put the file on five jump drives. One of these she keeps with her at all times.

  After she got the file, the site self-destructed.

  He is part of her now.

  For better or worse, part of her.

  BAITSAKHAN

  Rahatlk Konuk Evi, Urfa, Turkey

  Baitsakhan drags a strike-anywhere match across the top of the wall and lights a hand-rolled cigarette. Jalair stares through a pair of high-powered binoculars on a tripod pointed at a small hotel on the eastern edge of Urfa. They are on a rooftop. It has a garden. Honeysuckle, rosemary, a dwarf jacaranda, endless twisting vines of green grapes and morning glories encase the terrace. Baitsakhan pulls a violet morning glory from its stem and turns it in his fingers, making it thin and lifeless. He spits some loose tobacco on the white-painted rooftop. He drops the flower. Puts his foot over it. Crushes it.

  “See anything?”

  Jalair shakes his head. “No.”

  They’ve been in Turkey for 2.45 days, shadowing the chipped Nabataean.

  “Where the hell is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bat and Bold should be with us,” Baitsakhan growls. “We should have chased the Harrapan instead. Track the bitch down.”

  Jalair shakes his head again. “We are not in this for revenge, Baitsakhan. In the end she will get what is coming to her. They all will.”

  Baitsakhan doesn’t like it, but he knows that his older brother is right. Jalair squints into the eyepiece and takes hold of the long barrels of the binoculars. “Wait. I think . . . yes. It’s him.”

  Baitsakhan stands. “Move.” He pulls on the cigarette and leans forward. He holds the puff of smoke in his lungs.

  He is looking through the binoculars at another rooftop 95 m away. Maccabee Adlai is alone and has his back to them. He looks over a shoulder, practically right at Baitsakhan, but it’s not a searching look. The Nabataean is simply admiring the sunset. He doesn’t know what’s out there waiting for him.

  Baitsakhan and Jalair know that Maccabee has been in Urfa for three days. He flew in on an aliased New Zealand passport. He’s been in this small hotel since his arrival. He booked every room and paid the proprietor to mind his business. He’s gone to the old market twice and visited 18 mosques and one library. He’s stopped at 19 different internet cafés. He bought an Audi sedan from a private dealer and could’ve bought a second car with what he spent on clothing. He is alone and doesn’t seem to be actively communicating with anyone.

  Baitsakhan is not alone.

  His people, members of his line, have always hunted in small packs.

  He pulls away from the binoculars. He hands Jalair the cigarette, picks up a modern compound bow from the ground, and strings an arrow. He raises it, pulls the string, and sights through a scope. Maccabee’s back is there. He moves incrementally. Maccabee’s neck. Moves again. His head.

  “Suhkbataar wouldn’t be pleased, but I prefer this kind of bow to our traditional ones,” Baitsakhan says. Jalair is silent. Baitsakhan lowers the bow and eases up on the string. “Tonight we go in. Tonight we take his clue and kill him and move on.”

  Jalair nods, takes a drag off the cigarette. “Good. I want to kill something. Any death is better than none.”

  A flock of pigeons explodes over them from an adjacent building. As the sun sets, the call to prayer rings out over the ancient city.

  “Yes, brother. Any death is good.”

  KALA MOZAMI, CHRISTOPHER VANDERKAMP

  InterContinental Hotel Dubai–Festival City, Room 260

  Kala watches the boy sleep. They’ve made it through the aftermath of the crash, the questions and the reporters and the paperwork. Kala has not appeared on TV or the web or in print, and Christopher has only appeared for a brief second, a jacket draped over his shoulders, as they were hustled from a dark SUV into a building. They’ve interviewed with the airline and the investigators and counselors. Like any innocent person, Kala didn’t try to explain the absence of the name Jane Mathews from the manifest, but how else could she have gotten on the raft in the middle of the ocean? The American accent and the alibi provided by Christopher were enough evidence that she was not the wanted person that Agent Singh had been ordered to arrest. The lack of her name was a snafu, nothing more. Kala Mozami, all assumed, perished along with the other 274 passengers and crew.

  Blessings.

  Kala and Christopher are in a glass tower, the Dubai InterContinental. Qatar Airways is paying for their suite. To keep up appearances, they share the room. Christopher is in the bed, a soft sheet pulled to his chin, staring at the ceiling. He’s recounted the crash a dozen times, and his story hasn’t wavered. He’s been convincing and he knows it. Every time he’s left them out. The mother and the daughter. The dead.

  The murdered. Drifting in the depths of their eternal resting place.

  Kala walks from the living room into the bedroom and stops in front of a huge plateglass window. Christopher props himself up in the bed. He stares at her. Outside the window is the endless desert, the red wall of a sandstorm raging in the distance.

  Kala looks out the window. She remembers the old stories. The ones about the storms in the time before time. How they were used as shrouds by the Annunaki to conceal their vessels and their numbers. How, in turn, the great storms came to be like gods themselves. Obscuring, blinding, stinging gods without mercy.

  I am the storm, she thinks. Descended from the time before time, taught to obscure, blind, sting.

  Without mercy.

  She turns to Christopher. “You did very well, Christopher Vanderkamp. We’re free to move on to Turkey as planned.”

  He is silent.

  “I would thank you if I thought it would mean anything to you.”

  He is silent.

  “I’ll do so anyway. Thank you.”

  Christopher doesn’t want to speak to this murderer. They’ve been approached by all kinds of reporters since the plane crash and they all want to write the same story about young lovers surviving a tragedy. Young lovers—the very thought makes him want to puke. Kala, on the other hand, has spent the last two days seeming amused by all the attention. She knows that she’ll disappear soon, go back to Endgame. When that happens, Christopher wonders, what will happen to him?

  He hasn’t been able to shake the thought of the dead mother and daughter. They had survived a plane crash, why kill them? And even though he doesn’t want to speak to her, Christopher can’t help himself; he wants to know. “Why did you kill them?”

  She turns from the window. “I did them a favor.”

  “Why not do me a favor, then?”

  She steps toward him. “Because of the Cahokian. She’s my adversary. One of ten who remain, as far as I know. I’m going to use you to get to her.”

  “Then I’ll use you to do the same,” he says defiantly.

  She laughs.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “What has your little girlfriend told you?”

  “That there are twelve of you. That you’re playing this psychotic Endgame thing for the fate of the world.”

  “No. Not the world, Christopher.” Kala smiles sadly. “The world is already dead.”

  Christopher looks around. “Seems pretty alive to me.”

  “She didn’t tell you everything,” Kala says, pinching her lip thoughtfully. “I suppose I wouldn’t have either. It’d be like explaining trigonometry to a dog. A waste of breath. She pities you, her handsome high school sweethe
art, so she let you go on in ignorance.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m ignorant. Must be why I had such an easy time following you.”

  Kala bristles at that. She is ashamed this non-Player was able to track her and blames the distraction caused by her clue. Slowly, she walks toward the bed.

  “I do not pity you, Christopher. You are just a bargaining chip to me. So I will tell you the truth.” She gets closer. “Everything you think you know about the world is a lie. We did not come from the apes. There was no natural selection. It was actual, literal, intentional selection. The Annunaki created us to be their slaves, and gave us the tools to build what the world has become. And it is happening again. Your little girlfriend, me, the others—we don’t fight for the fate of the world. We fight to be selected. To be the favorite pet of the gods.”

  Christopher just stares at her. Kala isn’t sure if he’s understood her, and doesn’t really care either way. She’s right next to the bed now.

  “Rest assured, you won’t be picked,” Kala says.

  She strikes quickly, before Christopher can even flinch, hits a pressure point behind his ear. He’s out immediately.

  I am the storm.

  She sneers at the unconscious boy before turning her back on him. She goes to the desk and picks up her sat phone. She hasn’t used it since the raft. She accesses the recent calls. She selects the number Christopher dialed. She hits send.

  It doesn’t ring. There is an automated voice followed by a beep.

  “Cahokian, this is Kala Mozami, your Sumerian sister, the Player of the 89th. I regret having to do this, but this is Endgame.” Kala is using her honey-dipped voice, hoping her apologies will soften her request and ingratiate her to Sarah. “I have something of yours. A boy named Christopher. I did not seek him. He found me. He would like to find you. I will give him to you. But in return I want what the Annunaki—kepler 22b—gave to you. You may call me back at this number if you wish to strike a deal. And if you don’t, trust that I will discard him. Despite his high opinion of himself, he’s too much of a burden to keep for long. I hope this message finds you well. And I hope to hear from you soon. Bedrood, sister Sarah, until we speak.”

  She hangs up, plugs the phone into the charger, makes sure the ringer is turned up.

  When Sarah calls, she does not want to miss it.

  And Christopher won’t want her to miss it either.

  BAITSAKHAN, MACCABEE ADLAI

  Aslan Konuk Evi, Urfa, Turkey

  Baitsakhan and Jalair scuttle across rooftops, making hardly any noise. A waning half-moon hangs 21 degrees above the eastern horizon. They wear heavy gloves so that they can prop their hands on the shards of broken glass embedded in the tops of the parapet walls. They’re incredibly fast, agile. If they were to be spotted, they’d be gone before they could be seen again.

  Jalair has the compound bow and a small collection of arrows. In a hip holster Baitsakhan has a Heckler & Koch USP Compact Tactical pistol with a suppressor. He has a wavy Mongolian dagger in his right hand. They want and expect to kill tonight. They’re both looking forward to it.

  Two more rooftops to go.

  One.

  None.

  They’re on top of the small hotel. Jalair consults a miniature screen on his wristband that has a three-dimensional representation of Maccabee’s location. Jalair puts a fist in the air, raises a finger, remakes a fist. They move for the door on the roof.

  Locked.

  Jalair slides a rake pick and a tension tool from his sleeve. He puts them in the tumbler and fiddles and closes his eyes and slowly opens the door.

  A dark staircase is before them. A light is on in the hall at the bottom. Jalair steps in and goes down the stairs. He nocks an arrow loosely on the string. He looks at his wrist display. They need to go down two more flights before they reach him.

  There is one room on the top floor. They go down. Two rooms on the next floor. All the rooms are empty, their doors open. Down. Two rooms on this floor. One door open, the other closed. They switch off the hall light.

  Light comes up from the ground floor, so it’s not completely dark. Baitsakhan pulls the pistol from its holster and steps to the front. He points at himself, and then at Jalair, and then at the ground where Jalair stands. He wants Jalair to stay behind. Baitsakhan is the Player, and he will do this alone.

  Jalair nods and stands aside.

  Baitsakhan puts his hand on the knob and tries the door. It is unlocked. He pushes it forward enough to wedge his body into the room. Filtered light from the street touches the room here and there. Baitsakhan sees a desk, a chair, a suitcase. A Sig Sauer 9mm pistol is on the suitcase. A bed is in the corner. On the bed is the Nabataean. Sleeping, stupidly sleeping.

  The gun has an exploding round in it that will obliterate Maccabee’s legs. Unlike the Harrapan, Maccabee will not be running away. They will tie off his severed limbs or burn the wounds closed. Jalair will inject him with sodium thiopental and they will ask him some questions. When they get what they want, what Baitsakhan needs, they’ll kill him.

  Baitsakhan raises the gun, squeezes the trigger, fires.

  Maccabee rolls to the floor and the mattress explodes in a shower of feathers. Baitsakhan lowers the pistol, fires again, but Maccabee is on him already, holding a hardbound book with two hands. The round pushes through this, rending it in two. Baitsakhan’s gun hand is being boxed by the halves of the book. Maccabee twists his hands, and the gun comes free, falling to the floor.

  Maccabee kicks the gun away. Baitsakhan swipes his wavy dagger through the air, but Maccabee moves his body out of the way.

  “Little shit,” growls Maccabee.

  Jalair comes bow-first into the room. Maccabee catches sight of the silver arrowhead and throws himself backward into the door, breaking the arrow and crunching Jalair’s face on the other side. Maccabee pushes the door closed, breaking the weapon, and slides a bar across the door to keep Jalair out.

  Baitsakhan charges with the knife. Maccabee jumps, grabs a rafter, and lifts his feet just as Baitsakhan stabs the space where he was standing. Maccabee brings his feet down hard on Baitsakhan’s shoulders.

  Baitsakhan absorbs Maccabee’s hit by collapsing to the floor. Maccabee swings over Baitsakhan and lands by the table. He grabs his pistol and turns. He gets three shots off, but Baitsakhan is moving too much from side to side. Maccabee gets off one more shot and it grazes Baitsakhan’s ear, clipping a miniscule notch out of the lower part of his lobe.

  Their ears are ringing now, Maccabee’s all the worse on account of his injury in the pagoda. The Donghu slams his heel into Maccabee’s foot just as Maccabee brings his head down for a strike across Baitsakhan’s nose. But Baitsakhan’s head is already rising up in order to smash the bottom of Maccabee’s jaw.

  Their heads collide with a loud crack.

  For a moment, they are both dazed.

  “Fuck!” they both say.

  Baitsakhan vaults to his feet, the knife flashing in the intermittent light. Maccabee draws the suitcase from the table in front of him like a shield. Baitsakhan swipes and stabs and Maccabee parries. Baitsakhan brings the knife high and the blade sinks into the case, and he twists the whole arrangement away from Maccabee. The case bangs to the floor.

  There’s a brief pause as they size each other up. In that silence they hear the twang of a bowstring. In the hallway, a body hits the floor. Jalair has had to kill someone. At the same time, both Baitsakhan and Maccabee ask, “Police?”

  No, they would be louder. It must’ve been the innkeeper, they think at the same time.

  It’s only a brief détente. The two Players barrel into the space between them. Each wants the other to think that he is unarmed.

  I have him, Maccabee thinks, his pinkie ring flipped open and the needle ready.

  I have him, Baitsakhan thinks, as a long anodized razor flicks out of his specialized glove, completely invisible in the dark rush of combat.

  They meet and grapple with each other, and
each fails to land the finishing touch. But each gets the point in place—the needle over the cheek and the razor along the jugular—and each can feel the cold of the metal—a thin line for the razor and a pinpoint for the needle—and in that instant they realize that they are both about to lose Endgame.

  They freeze. Their eyes lock.

  Both are breathing hard.

  At the same time each demands, “What’s your clue?”

  They exchange a look of disbelief.

  “Where are you going?” Again, said in unison.

  “I’ll kill you!” Together.

  They look nothing alike, but they might as well be staring in a mirror. They each recognize it. They have fought to a draw. They are a match. But there is more. Both recognize that they are killers. Highly skilled, well-practiced, cold-blooded killers.

  “Truce?” they ask together.

  Their bodies and minds are one.

  Each nods. Maccabee pulls the needle from the cheek, Baitsakhan withdraws the blade.

  They are silent for a moment. Still standing incredibly close together, as if at any moment they could raise their weapons again and go for the kill. From the hallway a worried Jalair calls, “What is happening?” in Oirat.

  “Peace, brother,” Baitsakhan answers in the same language.

  “Let me in,” Jalair says.

  Baitsakhan ignores him.

  “What are you saying?” Maccabee demands.

  “That you and I are reaching an agreement,” Baitsakhan says in English. “That is what’s happening, yes?”

  Maccabee takes a step back. “Yes.”

  Baitsakhan steps back too.

  “You’ll never be able to trust me,” Maccabee says.

  “You’ll never be able to trust me,” Baitsakhan counters.

  “Good.”