Endgame: The Calling (18 page)

In their place is a string of Sanskrit letters. A jumble. She works them in her mind, and finally they come together.

The child is in your line now.

Win or he will die.

Wei’s B
nguân, Chang’an District, Xi’an, China

The owner of the guesthouse—a fiftysomething man named Wei—caters to travelers seeking refuge from the bustle of Xi’an. Most of his customers, he says, make day trips back to the city or to some of the local pyramids. He is happy to point out that he took the picture that is framed and hanging behind his desk. It’s a photo of a pyramid washed in the orange light of the setting sun, a wispy white cloud far in the distance.

Wei speaks very good English and mistakes the strange-looking pair of travelers for a couple. As they check in, Jago tries to play this up by sliding his arm around Sarah’s waist, but she elbows him in the side and he immediately backs off.

Wei laughs. “Traveling is not always easy, friends. You can trust that I will take good care of you here. It is what I do. I can tell that you need rest.”

“You have no idea,” Sarah says.

Wei laughs again and shoots Jago a knowing look. “Perhaps after you rest, no more elbows, hmm?”

Jago and Sarah exchange a quick look. He flashes his studded smile at her, but she just stares back at him, deadpan. Jago decides to change the subject. “Do you have internet access, Mr. Wei?” he asks.

“There is a shared computer off the dining room. I have satellite service and a generator for when the power fails, so we are never disconnected,” he says proudly.

They pay for three days in advance and head for their room. As they go up the stairs, Sarah asks, “Why did you try to put your arm around me?”

“He wants to see a couple, so I was giving him a couple.” Jago shrugs. “Makes us more incognito.”

“Jago, there’s no way we could ever be incognito in this country.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“You’re not getting any of this, you know,” she says playfully.

“No? Why not?”

“This isn’t a James Bond movie. You”—she points at him and makes a little circle in the air—“are no Bond.”

“I could kick Bond’s ass, you know.”

She laughs. “So could I.”

They come to the door. Jago opens it for her. “I just want to lie down. Can I do that, at least?”

“So long as it’s on your bed.”

Sleep is high on the list of things they each want to do. Another is shower. But at the top is getting a good look at the disk.

They walk into their room. It has large windows that look over an inner courtyard, two twin beds, and a small bathroom with a tub.

Sarah makes immediately for the tub and turns on the water. It’s hot, and she smiles contentedly as it splashes across the back of her hand. Jago takes the disk out of his backpack, although he’s really paying more attention to Sarah. He’s imagining her in that tub and what might happen in this room. Smartly, he keeps his mouth shut, playing it cool. James Bond—
psshh,
he has nothing on Jago Tlaloc.

Sarah steps out of the bathroom and examines the disk with Jago, their heads close together. It is gray stone. Eight inches across and two inches thick. On one side is a spiral groove 1/8th of an inch thick that runs out from the center. In this are little nicks and creases. Jago turns it over, and on the other side is a series of 20 concentric circles. Within some of the circles are strings of a mysterious, nonpictorial text. It is full of curlicues and exacting dot matrices and short diagonal hash marks.

As old as the disk is, the markings look as if they were written with a machine.

“You ever seen marks like that?” Sarah asks.

“No. You?”

“No. Can I hold it?”

He passes it to her. And it happens. Like a shot through her brain it happens. Jago asks if she is all right, but he sounds far-off and she can’t answer. Her clue of incomprehensible numbers changes. Most of the digits flutter and disappear. The ones that are left fly and rearrange, right in front of her, as if they are floating in the air.

“Jago, grab those.” She points at a pad and pen sitting on the side table between their beds.

“What happened?”

“Get the pen and paper!”

Jago does it. “Bossy,” he grunts.

“Write this down. 346389863109877285812. Got it?”

“346389863109877285812.” Jago squints down at the meaningless line of numbers. “What does it mean?”

“I have no idea,” Sarah says. “My clue . . . something changed when I touched the disk.”

“Perfect. More puzzles,” he says in frustration. There hasn’t been enough fighting in Endgame for Jago. Fighting or—he glances at Sarah—other physical activity.

As they stare at the numbers on the page, Sarah’s satellite phone rings.

Jago frowns. “Who’s calling you?”

She shrugs, puts the disk on the foot of the bed, and fishes the phone out of her bag. She looks at its display. “Oh my god.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s . . . my boyfriend.”

Jago arches an eyebrow. “You have a boyfriend?”

“I did, but I broke it off with him after the meteor hit. When I knew this was all real.”

“You tell him why?” Jago asks. “Or did you just say”—he fumbles for the American expression—“it’s not you, it’s me?”

The phone is still ringing.
Christopher.
What could he want? Sarah shakes her head, annoyed; annoyed that he would call, annoyed at how much she wants to answer the phone.

“I told him I was leaving and he’d probably never see me again and he should let go of me.”

“Seems he didn’t get the message.”

“If I don’t answer, maybe he will.”

“You don’t strike me as an easy girl to get over,” Jago muses.

Sarah doesn’t answer. She’s tired of the banter. Eventually the phone stops ringing.

“I’m taking a bath,” she says abruptly, turning and walking into the bathroom. “I’ll figure out those numbers later.”

A boyfriend
, Jago thinks.
More competition, though of a different kind.

She closes the door.

After a few moments, he hears her getting into the tub.

I like competition
, he thinks.

I have spent most of my life eliminating it
.

And the trees laid down like toothpicks.
^lv

Grand Mercure Hotel, Room 172, Huímín Square, Xi’an, China

Christopher finds Kala surprisingly easy to follow. It’s as if she is constantly preoccupied and distant and blissfully unaware of her surroundings. Like she is focused on some figment of her imagination or some distant target that she’s trying to find.

If this is the type of person Sarah is up against, she should have no problem winning.

After 36 hours on Kala’s tail Christopher has become so at ease with shadowing her that his only fear is that she will jump off another building.

Because there’s no way he is going to do anything like that.

But so far so good. Here he is in the same internet café as her. Here he is in the same tea shop. Here he is standing outside the electronics store where she’s shopping. Here he is in the same hotel—a very nice one—on the same floor. Here he is watching the hall through the peephole. Here he is bribing the bellhops to call him if they see her leave. Here he is outside the same internet café as the day before. Here he is following her taxi in a taxi of his own. Here he is at the airport. Here he is in line, just behind her, and still she doesn’t notice him. Here he is overhearing her conversation with the desk agent at Qatar Airways. Here he is buying a ticket to the same place she just bought a ticket to, a place called Urfa in Turkey. They have to fly first to Changzhou, then to Dubai, then to Istanbul.

The first flight leaves in 45 hours.

Here they are leaving the airport.

Sarah said she’d trained for years to master all this Endgame stuff. Granted, Christopher hasn’t had to fight anyone yet, but he’s pretty excited at how easy all the superspy moves are coming to him. He wishes Sarah could see what he’s been up to. Maybe she’d reconsider teaming up.

Since he knows where and when Kala is flying out, Christopher lays off for a day. He goes back to the hotel and watches TV and reads the news on the laptop he brought from home. He unpacks and repacks his bag. He sleeps fitfully. His dreams are plagued with images of Sarah being tortured or chased, beaten or burned. He keeps seeing her standing amidst 11 other Players, all of whom are trying to kill her.

He wakes at 4:17 a.m. and tosses and turns for an hour, unable to get the dreams out of his mind. He gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face. He wonders where she is, what she’s doing, if she’s okay, if she’s alive. He decides to call her. He called her once already and her phone rang until it went to voice mail.

The greeting was automated.

Impersonal.

He didn’t leave a message.

He just wanted to hear her voice.

Hear her say hello.

Hear her laugh.

Hear her say, “I love you.”

He misses her.

He just wanted to hear her voice.

Liu Residence, Unregistered Belowground Property, Tongyuanzhen, Gaoling County, Xi’an, China

An is in a dark room. A quartet of computer screens is arranged before him in a grid. One shows a Chinese news feed, another shows BBC World News. Both have the volume
blinkblink
muted. Both show pictures of the meteors and their
blinkSHIVER
carnage. An likes carnage.

A little more than a week old and these images still captivate him. Other Players might have wished for Endgame, but none pined for it like An.

In time, An will be just like the meteors.
BLINKBLINK.
He will captivate them all.

An stares at a lower screen. It has a graph on it. On the graph is a web of lines dipping and diving and making
blink
making no
blinkblink
making no goddamned kepler damned Endgame damned
blinkblink
no sense.

Longitude vs. latitude.

Place vs. place.

Here vs. there.

blinkblinkSHIVERblink.

An hammers furiously on a keyboard. Bangs numbers and strings and code into a console. Runs them. Watches the screen
blinkblink
watches the screen
blinkblink
change.

He leans in, watches, scratches the back of his neck at the hairline hard for five seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds. He scowls at the graph. The algorithm is beautiful. They usually are. He stops scratching and inspects his fingernails. Dandruff and dry skin, chipped and white. He sticks a finger in his mouth, sucks off the flakes. Removes the finger from his lips with a pop and wipes it on his jeans and puts the finger on the screen and traces over the graph. Follows a
blink
follows a
blink
follows a green line.

Stops.

There?

Blinkblinkblinkblink.

Yes.

There.

Though the position
blink
the position
blink
the position is not exact.

He needs to pin it first.

He swivels in his chair and bangs on another keyboard. Loads an IP address aggregator with the phone’s approximate coordinates.
Blinkblinkblink.
Casts a wide net
blink
and sets criteria for searches. Plane or train bookings, ancient sites, pyramids
SHIVER
Olmec culture, kepler 22b. The program will report back which computers are searching for what and when.
SHIVER. BLINK.
If An thinks one of these is Jago, he will confirm it with a
blink
robocall to Jago’s phone and triangulate.