Reap (4 page)

I put a handcuff on his left wrist and locked him to the radiator. Then I grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom and used it to gag him.

“You want to know what we're doing here?” I asked as I rummaged through the closet. There was a suit there, but I didn't want that. All I needed was a shirt that wasn't covered with Kat's blood. I knelt down and unzipped a gym bag.

“We're saving the world,” I said. “You probably thought Eugene was crazy, or maybe he told you that we're crazy, but all of it's true. If it wasn't true, then why would Raakel—the girl in the other room—why would she be here? We sent out invitations, and she understood what we were doing, and she came here. Because of this goddamned Endgame. I hate it just as much—no, I hate it more than you do. Because I know what it is. The Players fighting for the end of the world. They're fighting for survival, and we have to stop them before they come after each other.”

I found a plain gray sweatshirt and pulled it from the bag.

“If we don't do this, the entire population of the world could be wiped out. Well, maybe a twelfth will live. But billions will die. Billions. Can you even comprehend that? We don't know how it will happen—disease, nukes, maybe just hunting us down like animals—but it will happen. That was the contract signed thousands of years ago. By killing Raakel, I just stopped the Minoan line from Playing. Now we have to stop the rest of them, if we want to stop Endgame from happening.”

I pulled the sweatshirt on and checked the agent's Colt Lawman
revolver. I opened the cylinder to see if it was fully loaded. It was, and I put the safety on and tucked it into my belt.

“When this is all over, you can hunt me down. I know I've done a lot of illegal things in the last four months. But you'll have to wait, because there's a job to be done. Who knows—maybe I'll die and you won't need to look for me.”

I gave him one last look, took the papers from the table, and then exited the room. I put the
DO NOT DISTURB
placard on the door.

The corridor was empty, and I looked for the nearest stairs. I wanted to find a back way out of this place and stay as far from Raakel's room as I could. From what I was able to pick up from the one-sided phone conversation, the agent hadn't informed the Germans about Raakel yet. He only spoke on the phone to other Americans.

That could mean backup was coming. Or maybe there was no one to send. Maybe the agent was bluffing, and he was alone. I looked at my watch. I'd been in this damn hotel for more than two hours. I needed to get out and find Kat or John. Or Mary.

I ran down the stairs, as fast as I could.

I was flooded with confidence. Not only had I killed a Player, but I had successfully escaped from an agent. Of what agency, I didn't know, but he was some kind of cop. State Department, maybe. From the consulate, perhaps.

At the bottom of the stairs there were two doors, one to the hotel's main floor and another to the back of the hotel. I cautiously stepped out a side door. It was lighter now; the sun had risen. There were still people in the street and in the park, but no sign of Kat or John or anyone else. I was going to have to go back to the safe house if I was ever going to find them. Odds were the safe house would be empty by now, and I'd have to call on the walkie-talkie. We hadn't made contingency plans for if we got separated.

I made a beeline for the closest train platform and started jogging. They'd be at the next targets now—other hotel rooms somewhere. Or would the Players all have gone to the plaza already? That's where
we had talked about eventually meeting them—we'd talked of getting snipers up on the roof of the buildings surrounding the spiral sunburst. But could we do that now? I was seeing cops all over the place, in cars with flashing lights or on street corners trying to do crowd control.

There were clinics everywhere—or pharmacies, maybe. They were small, with neon crosses glowing. I wondered if Kat could be in one of them, getting better stitches than my uneven, crooked attempt. She'd need major surgery eventually. She'd told me that. Raakel's sword had cut through at least some tendons—Kat couldn't move her fingers more than a little painful twitching.

The train stop was crowded, with Olympic guests everywhere. They were all speaking in different languages, and I could only catch a little.
Terrorism
seemed to be the same in every language, and I heard variations of
Israel
a lot.

I waited in the warm morning air for several minutes before the lights of a train appeared down the line.

“Have you heard?” a woman behind me said. “At the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. They found two people dead. There were others there too. A Japanese girl, they said, and an American.”

“What?” another woman replied. “That's just down the street from us.”

“I know. I talked with a policeman and he said that there was a tremendous gunfight. A young woman managed to evade capture and is at large.”

Mary, maybe? John had said that Tyson had gone down. And the Japanese girl—was she Mu? What could have been happening in the last two hours?

“Is it part of the dreadful attacks on the Israelis?”

“He didn't know,” she said. “Or perhaps he just wasn't going to tell me. No one has made an official statement about any of this yet.”

“If they don't have the terrorists contained, one would think they should issue a warning to the public.”

“I do wonder if it's something else entirely,” the first woman said. “The hostage situation would seem to have nothing to do with the Japanese or the Americans.”

As the train drew closer, their conversation moved to a discussion of whether events would be canceled and if it would disrupt the schedule of the games.

We had to cram inside the crowded train, and I stood in the center, clutching a strap to keep my balance. I listened for more news, but no one had anything solid to say. A few people griped about having been awakened by sirens, and someone else said there'd been a rumor of a man running through the plaza carrying a rifle. But officials were still being tight-lipped and didn't know the extent of what was going on.

Most people got off the train before I did, and when we finally reached my stop, only a handful of people were left.

“Geht es dir gut?”
an old woman asked me, and tapped my hand.

I looked down. There was dried blood on the back of my hand and fingers. Kat's blood, from while I was stitching her up.

“I'm okay,” I said, and smiled.

She gave me a suspicious look, but she turned her head, and I got off the train.

I climbed the stairs up to the front door of our safe house. There was no secret knock or even keys. I just let myself in and saw Mary sitting across the room, pointing a pistol at me.

“Oh my God,” she said. “What are you doing here?” She jumped up and gave me a long hug. I hugged her back, but things weren't the same as they'd been. I'd changed. Maybe it was planting the invitations with Kat at my side. Maybe it was the train ride to Baghdad. But somewhere along the line, I had changed, and I wanted to see Kat in front of me, not Mary.

“I got caught at the hotel. Someone in the government—the American government. I don't know who it was, but I had to sit there for two hours while he interrogated me.” I let go of her and slumped down
into a chair.

“What did you tell him?” she asked, sitting across from me.

“There was nothing to say that he didn't already know. Eugene ratted us out. He spilled everything. This guy knew about Endgame and the Players, and he knew our plans to meet at the plaza.”

“How did he find you?”

“He found the Minoan—I don't know how. Maybe Eugene still had the dossier on her. He was supposed to go with me and Kat.” I looked around the room, frustrated, and then stood up and walked to the kitchen sink to wash Kat's blood off my hand.

“Well, everything has gone to hell here,” she said. Her voice was ragged, and she didn't look much better. “John was supposed to find you—”

“He did.”

“So you know about Tyson?”

“Yeah. Someone on the train heard about you and Tyson. You're wanted.”

She seemed shaken, not her calm, happy self. “Lee died too. That was just now—well, maybe an hour ago. Tyson died at the hospital after getting shot while we went after the Koori, and then Lee went with me and died fighting the Mu.”

“You've killed two Players?” I said. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” she said. “The Mu was staying at a hostel next to one of those small neighborhood police stations. She got Lee right in the head. He didn't have a chance. It was just the blink of an eye and she got him. I got this.” She pulled up her shirt to show me her stomach. There was a white bandage with a red spot in the middle.

“You got shot?”

“Grazed. And then I killed her, and had to escape past the police. I killed the cop, too. He never saw it coming. He thought I was just one of the kids staying at the hostel.”

“You just shot a cop?” I asked, my stomach turning and visions of the sheriff coming back to me.

“Of course,” she said. “I was fighting for my life. She killed Lee.”

“But you said the cop thought you were just one of the kids at the hostel. Innocent.”

“But he saw my face,” she said. “What was I supposed to do? Bruce and I learned in Mexico that you don't leave witnesses.”

“But you said he didn't witness you.”

She stood up and came over to me. “Mike, what is this all for? You knew we were going to war with these guys. You can't have imagined that we were just going to talk our way out of anything.”

“Couldn't I?” I yelled. “You kept emphasizing that this was not about
killing
Players; it was about
stopping
them. John had me write up the sales pitches. Did you even try that with the Mu? What about the Koori? Or did you just go in shooting first and asking questions later?”

“Come on, Mike,” she said. “Grow up. We did target shooting every single day. We practiced stacking up at a door and making a hostile entry. We ran the mountains. We did obstacle courses. Did you really think all of that was so that we would be in better shape to
talk
?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did think that we were going to talk, because that's what we said we were going to do. That's what John said, and it's what Walter said, and it's what you said. And you know what? It's what Kat and I did with the Minoan.”

“And how did that go for you?”

“We ended up having to kill her,” I said, turning off the water and drying my hands. “But we gave her a fair chance. She knew why we were there, and she had a choice. We didn't just ambush her.”

“And now Kat is at the emergency room,” Mary said. “And we still have seven Players to kill. Still no word from Barbara and Douglas—they were going for the Olmec—or Molly, Henry, and Phyllis—they were going for the Harappan. We're getting murdered out there, so maybe you'd better start to act like this is the war that it is.”

“You lied to me.”

“Lied? Mike, you are such a—”

“What? Such a what?”

“A child. I used to think that you joined Zero line for me, but I was wrong. You joined because you're a Boy Scout. You really thought we were going to end this all peacefully, and you could go back home like nothing had happened.”

“I didn't think that. I killed that sheriff. I robbed that bank.”

“Then what? You thought that you were going to retire on some remote farm somewhere and live the quiet, peaceful life of a hero? You probably imagined me right there beside you.”

“Mary,” I said through gritted teeth, “you're old news. Kat and I are together now. I don't need—I don't
want
you.”

“Oh,” she said, and then stopped without saying anything else.

“Yeah.”

Her voice was quieter now. “What did I ever do to you?”

“You left me. When I thought I needed you most. And . . .” I looked out the window and then moved back to the chair by the door. “And then I realized that I didn't really need you. You did your job. You got me into this mess. You got me to believe, and you were right—Endgame is real. But we have very different ideas about what to do about it.”

“The Players are killing us,” she said, still standing where she was, not turning to look at me. “I wish we really could talk our way out of this.”

“You weren't expecting that?” I asked. “You thought that going in like cowboys, shooting everyone we see, was going to work? At least Kat and I had realistic expectations. We knew that we were going up against killers. Assassins. We knew we were outmatched. You had too much faith in a couple of ex–Green Berets.”

“Bruce was a vet. He wouldn't tell me how many he killed, but he said he could remember every face.”

“I always see the sheriff.”

“The Mu didn't look like a killer. She looked like a kid.” Mary turned to face me. “We thought it would be easy. I had a clean shot and I didn't take it. I didn't want to shoot so close to the other people in the hostel. I thought I was being kind.”

“What hospital is Kat in?”

“I don't know the name of it,” she said. “Walter found it on the map. He said it was just a mile north. John took her there in a cab.”

“Is John still with her?”

“No,” she said, and crossed the room to pick up the walkie-talkie. “They're trying to kill the others. Walter and John are. I was supposed to wait here and alert them if anyone came back.”

“Where did they go?”

“John is after the Olmec, and seeing if he can find out what happened to Barbara and Douglas. Walter is going for the Shang. I was supposed to tell the next group back to go to the Nabataean.”

“Call them and tell them I'm going for Kat. I'll call you when I know more.” I picked up someone's backpack and dumped out its contents onto the floor, and then I put one of the spare walkie-talkies inside.