by Frey, James
“He won’t let you have it,” I say to Ott. “Never. If he told you he would, he was lying.”
“She’s very convincing,” Kenney says. “I can see why you fell for her lies, Samuel.”
“She hasn’t lied to me,” Boone snaps. “Ever.”
Kenney laughs again. It is a terrible sound, filled with scorn and malice. “Of course not,” he says.
“Look,” Boone says. “I have the plans and the pieces of the weapon. We can take them back to the council. Back to America. Just let her go back to the Minoans. They don’t have anything now anyway.”
“An excellent idea,” Kenney says. “I’m pleased to see you’re being sensible now. Although I imagine the council will require further explanation from you, having the weapon safely in Cahokian hands is really what we all want. And I’m sure your mother will be relieved to have you home again safe and sound.”
It all sounds very reasonable, easily settled and wrapped up. All Boone has to do is hand over the weapon and the plans. Part of me, the part still hardwired into my Player brain, wonders if he really intends to do it. After all, it makes sense, and if Kenney really lets me go, we all walk away alive, if not happy. My heart, however, tells me he won’t. Once the weapon is given up, he has no reason not to try to kill us. Besides, there’s still a piece of the puzzle missing.
“What about Brecht?” I say. “Without him, the plans are useless.”
“Not useless,” says Kenney. “More difficult to work with, of course, and it would be easier if he cooperated. Then again, he might be persuaded if he thinks the lives of his daughter and grandson depend on it.”
“You have Lottie and Bernard?” Boone says.
“You thought we didn’t know about them?” Kenney answers. “Or about your brother?”
“Are they all right?”
“For the moment. Whether or not they stay that way will depend entirely on you and Brecht.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Boone says. “There’s just one problem.”
“Oh?” Kenney says. “What is that?”
“The Cahokians don’t make threats against people’s children.”
Kenney snorts. “What kind of game do you think you’re playing, Samuel? This isn’t a playground, and this isn’t hide-and-seek. We do what we need to win. And now I am through playing with you. Either cooperate with me, or first I kill the girl and then I give the order for your brother’s wife and child to be dealt with.”
Before Boone can reply, another voice says, “He is not who he tells you he is.”
I recognize the voice. It belongs to Tolya. Turning my head away from Ott, I see him shamble out of the darkness. He is holding a gun of some kind.
“He came to the apartment,” Tolya continues. “He tried to get Yuri and Oksana to tell him where the weapon is. When they told him they did not know, he killed them. I was hiding. I heard everything.”
“Is this true?” It’s Ott who has spoken. He sounds shocked and angry.
“Yes,” Kenney says.
“Who are you?” Boone asks. “Who are you really?”
“Who I am does not matter,” Kenney tells him. “What matters is that I am telling the truth about Brecht’s daughter and her child. If you want them to come to no harm, you’ll give me what it is I want.”
“Ott, are you working with him?” I ask the man in front of me.
Ott shakes his head. “I knew nothing about Lottie and Bernard,” he says.
“How did you come to be involved with him?” I say.
“Tolya remembered the frequency on which Boone transmitted the message to his council,” he says. “I did not trust Boone to give me the weapon, and so I contacted them myself and told them I had it. This man replied and agreed to meet me.”
Boone looks at Kenney. “How did you intercept my messages from Berlin?”
“So many questions,” Kenney says. “Again, it is not important who I am or who I am working for. The only question is, are you going to give me the weapon? As you can see, I have no qualms about killing those who stand in my way.”
“You have two guns trained on you,” Boone says. “And two Players who would love a chance to get their hands on you.”
“You’re right,” Kenney says. “So let’s remove one of those problems.”
He turns and fires at Tolya, who sees him move and tries to get out of the way. But he’s hit, and he falls to the ground with a cry. Boone and I use the distraction to leap into action. As Boone reaches for the pistol in his coat pocket, I go for mine. At the same time, we dive and roll, making it more difficult for anyone to hit us if they fire at us. We come to our feet holding our guns.
Ott has ducked behind the statue of the diving woman, and attempts to shoot at me from behind the base. But he is a poor shot, and hindered by the darkness. Kenney is more adept, but Boone is firing at him as well, and he has retreated from the footpath and into the trees. It is difficult for any of us to see the others, even with the clear sky and the quarter moon.
I hear running feet, and realize that Ott has given up trying to battle me and is running away. He is going in the direction of the trees where Kenney has hidden himself and where Boone has also disappeared. I hear several shots, then nothing.
“Boone!” I call out.
“I’m all right,” he shouts back, but his voice is moving away from me. I assume that he’s in pursuit of Kenney.
Tolya is lying on the ground. I have to decide whether I’m going to go after Ott and Kenney or check on him. I know Boone can handle himself, so I decide to check the boy first. I run over to him and kneel. He’s still alive, but barely. Kenney’s bullet hit him in the chest. There is blood on the ground beneath him, black like water in the moonlight, and blood dribbling from his mouth. He is dying.
I take his hand and hold it. His fingers grip mine tightly. He says something, but I can’t hear it. I lean down.
“Sobaki,” he says in Russian. “Sobaki layut.”
The dogs. The dogs are barking.
He smiles, and his eyes empty of life. There is nothing I can do for him, so I leave him there and enter the trees. I have heard nothing since those first shots, and can see nothing at all. I am blind as I move through the woods, searching for the spots where moonlight filters in through the branches. I know I am heading toward the riverbank, but I have no idea where Boone or the others are.
Then there is another series of shots. I call Boone’s name again, and he calls back. I follow the sound, and find him on the riverbank. Ott is lying on the ground, and Boone is kneeling beside him.
“Where’s Kenney?” I ask.
“He ran onto the river,” Boone says. “I wounded him.”
He points, and I see a spattering of darkness against the snow. Blood.
“I’ll go after him,” Boone says. “You stay here with Ott.”
I nod. Boone gets up and goes off, following the trail of blood. I turn my attention to Ott. He’s holding his hand to his shoulder, and also appears to have been shot.
“It was Kenney,” he says, although I have not asked.
“He thought you were Boone,” I say as I pull his hand away from his shoulder. A quick check shows me that the wound is not serious. The bullet has just grazed him, slicing through his heavy wool coat but not entering his flesh.
“No,” he says. “He knew who I was. He was trying to kill me.”
“You sound surprised,” I say. “What did you think he would do?”
Ott starts to stand.
“Where are you going?”
“We need to get to Brecht before Kenney does,” he says.
“Kenney knows where Brecht is?”
“Yes,” he says. “And Brecht does not know not to trust him.”
“Where is he?”
“At the home of an ally,” he says.
I can tell he’s hesitant to tell me any more than that. I don’t blame him, although he’s going to need to trust me if we’re going to get to Brecht.
“Did Yuri or Oksana know where you took him?”
“No. They knew nothing.”
“All right,” I say. “But we can’t go without Boone. Besides, he might catch Kenney anyway.”
“We cannot wait to find out,” Ott insists. “There is no time.”
He’s right. But if we leave, Boone will have no idea where we’re going.
“We must go,” Ott says. “If Brecht is lost to us, the weapon is useless.”
This is not entirely true, as Kenney himself made clear earlier. Still, losing Brecht to Kenney would not be good. I don’t know who he is working for, but he’s already shown that he’s willing to kill anyone who gets in his way. It’s possible he’s even working for another line. Regardless, Brecht is a key player in what’s going on. We need to protect him.
Again I think of Scylla and Charybdis. Do I help Brecht and risk losing Boone if something goes wrong? Or do I go after Boone and hope that we catch Kenney before he can reach Brecht? My heart wants to go to Boone.
He’s a Player, I remind myself.
He is. And although I no longer want the weapon for myself, for my own line, I don’t want to lose Brecht to someone else who might be able to use what he knows. I have to believe that the Fates will bring Boone and me back together. How, I don’t know.
“Let’s go to the scientist,” I tell Ott.
Boone
Kenney has a head start on me, and the darkness makes it difficult to search for him. But he’s also wounded, and occasionally I spy spots of blood on the snow and ice that blanket the frozen river. As I expected, he’s running toward the fishing huts, probably hoping to cross the river and escape on the other side. If he’s as smart as he seems to be, he will soon stanch the wound, making it almost impossible to track him. I need to find him, and soon.
I reach the first cluster of huts. As I run by each one, I peer inside, in case Kenney is trying to hide there. But all I see are the startled faces of fishermen who look up from staring down at the lines that descend through the holes they’ve drilled in the ice and into the waters of the river below. Several have caught fish, which lie on the ice beside them, gasping or already dead.
Then I hear a shout, a man yelling. I run toward the commotion and find an old man standing outside his hut, shaking his fist at a retreating fighter.
“He stole my skates!” he bellows.
Many of the fishermen have pairs of skates hanging on the walls of their huts, simple blades that strap to their shoes and make traveling on the river easier. I’m certain that it’s Kenney who has taken the man’s pair. If so, he will now be much faster than I am.
I leave the man yelling for the thief to go to the devil, and I look for my own pair of unguarded skates. I find them easily enough, and putting them on does not take long. I have skated for years, on frozen lakes and ponds and rivers, so I know how to balance, how to push with my thighs and let my weight propel me forward. As I shoot across the ice and into the night in pursuit of Kenney, I hope that he is less familiar with skating, and that I can catch him.
Once the fisherman behind me stops shouting, the night is silent, the only sound the scraping of the skates’ blades on the ice and the in and out of my breathing. I concentrate on listening for the sound of Kenney skating somewhere ahead of me, hear it coming from my right, and correct my course to head for him.
I wonder who this man is. I don’t believe he is Cahokian. There’s something about him that’s too calculating, too cruel, for someone from my line. Not that we are less determined than other lines, or want any less to win. But I have yet to meet a Cahokian who enjoys violence as much as Kenney seems to. Then again, maybe I’m being naïve.
If he isn’t Cahokian, he has somehow intercepted my transmissions to the council. Shortwave radio channels are open, of course, so anyone could hear. But my messages were coded in such a way that they would be meaningless to anyone who didn’t understand what I was really saying. He did. Which means that he is an insider of some kind. He knows too much about Endgame, about me, about my family and the weapon, for this to be some kind of bizarre coincidence.
I see him ahead of me, a black shape against the night, an almost imperceptible shifting of shadow back and forth. He has to know that I’m behind him, has to hear my skates against the ice. I try harder to listen to the pattern of his movement, to match mine to his so that he won’t hear me. He can’t risk turning his head to look for me, so sound is all he has to go on.
We keep skating like this, him not slowing down and me not getting close enough to fire at him. I’d hoped his wound would cause some difficulty for him, but either he is stronger and more determined than I gave him credit for, or he has not been badly hurt. All I can do is keep going, trying to keep him in sight. Soon, though, if we keep going in this direction, we will come to the edge of the river. Then what? Will I be able to take him there?
Then it occurs to me—maybe instead of trying to stop him, I should let him go and follow him. Killing him would obviously eliminate a major problem. However, there might be something more important to be gained by not killing him. Information. I don’t know who he really is or who he’s working for. If I kill him, I will never find out. If I leave him free to go where he wants to, though, he might lead me to answers.
It’s a difficult decision. If I follow him, I’m leaving Ariadne behind with Ott. I know she can handle him. I’m not worried about that. But where will she go? How will I find her again? And what if Kenney just leads me on a wild-goose chase? He knows I’m following him, so he’ll try to lose me.
Unless he’s trying to get somewhere before one of us does. Like to wherever Brecht is being kept. Kenney doesn’t have the weapon, so the only thing of value he has is Brecht. Maybe Lottie and Bernard, but I have a feeling that was just a bluff to get me to go along with him. He might very well know where they are, but something tells me he hasn’t yet taken them. He was most likely waiting to see what I would do first.
I decide to let him go. My gut tells me that Ariadne will persuade Ott one way or another to tell her where Brecht is. If that’s also where Kenney is going, then we’re now in a race to see who gets there first, in which case it’s best for me to stay on his tail. Even if he knows, or suspects, that I’m following him, he still has little choice but to go wherever Brecht is. He can’t risk Ott or Ariadne getting there first.
Now there are lights shining on the shore. We’re nearing the far edge of the river. I keep pace with Kenney as it gets closer, but I change my course slightly so that I approach the shore to his right, rather than behind him. I see him scan the area as he stops to remove his skates, then hurries up a flight of steps. He doesn’t see me doing the same farther down the bank. But I can tell he knows I’m here, as several times he stops and looks around him.
He walks quickly down the path that follows the river. I stay in the shadows behind him, not letting him out of my sight but not overtaking him. I suspect at some point he is going to need a vehicle, and I’m right. He stops beside a KIM 10-50 and does something to the door before pulling it open and slipping inside.
I waste no time doing the same, using the butt of my pistol to shatter the window on an Opel and opening the door. After that, getting it started is easy, and when Kenney pulls away, I’m not far behind. I drive with my lights off, which presents few problems as the road is not busy at this time of night. But that also means that I have to be more careful about not letting Kenney see me.
Fortunately, he seems far more interested in getting where he’s going in a hurry, and tailing him is not difficult. When he stops in front of an apartment building, I stop too. And when he dashes inside, I’m only steps behind him.
Kenney races up the stairs, not bothering to look behind him, until he reaches the third floor. There he stops in front of an apartment. The door is already open. He steps inside, and a moment later I hear him curse loudly. He comes running back out, only to find me standing in the hallway, my pistol pointed at him.
“
Didn’t find what you were looking for?” I ask.
“Killing me won’t help you,” Kenney says.
“Did I say I was going to kill you?” I ask. “Besides, I don’t see how you’re in any position to try to bargain. I have the weapon.”
“And I—we—still have Brecht’s daughter and grandchild,” Kenney says. “If he ever wants to see them alive, I need to live as well. If I fail to report in, my associates will be more than happy to make sure Brecht never gets the reunion he longs for.”
“Maybe I don’t care about that,” I say.
“Oh, but you do,” Kenney says. “After all, they are your brother’s family as well.”
When I don’t answer, Kenney smiles. “Your love for your family is your greatest weakness, Samuel. And that includes your love for the Minoan. You think it’s what will save you, but in the end, it will be what causes your downfall.”
“Who are you?” I ask. “You’re not Cahokian.”
“No,” he says. “You’re correct about that. Nor am I Minoan, or Nabataean, or La Tène, or any of your other so-called lines. But I have been associated with many of them. I suppose you could say I am a free agent. I go where I’m needed.”
“Or where you’re paid to go,” I suggest.
“Money can be an excellent motivation, yes.”
“If you have no line, what’s your interest in Endgame?”
“Curiosity,” he says. “And, as you pointed out, the financial reward can be most agreeable.”
“How did you find out about Endgame?”
“You hear stories,” he says. “All kinds of stories. Most turn out to be nothing more than that. Occasionally you stumble upon something that turns out to be real. Well, you believe it to be real, which is all that matters to me.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I’ve heard and seen a great number of strange things, many of which people would consider unbelievable. Do I think that you and the others are truly involved in a game to decide who survives the end of the world? No. But it doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what you believe, and how I can profit from that belief.”