The Moscow Meeting
James Frey
The second story in a heart-stopping novella trilogy that follows a forbidden love that threatens Endgame in post-World War II Germany and takes place prior to the events in the New York Times bestseller, Endgame: The Calling.Humanity rests on the shoulders of twelve Players. But when the lives of a Cahokian Player and a Minoan Player intertwine over the search for an ancient weapon in post-World War II Berlin, the last thing they expect is to let their guard down, and fall in love. Now the fate of the world is threatened, as Boone and Ariadne race against the clock to keep the weapon from falling into the wrong hands.But this is Endgame. And only one can win.
Copyright (#ulink_928a6a87-1265-52d9-845f-28d518c73ad2)
First published in ebook in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2017
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Endgame: The Fugitive Archives Volume 2: The Moscow Meeting © 2017 by Third Floor Fun, LLC
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Additional logo and icon design by John Dismukes
James Frey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780062332745
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007585328
Version: 2017-02-16
Contents
Cover (#u1978d098-8761-5f6c-a497-cfad56b44842)
Title Page (#ud4ea978c-c003-5be6-bc2b-12233b84f386)
Copyright (#ue6f20057-9a24-50da-b0ba-75d29eb01e23)
Chapter 1 (#u8bc22727-f4bf-5641-aaa6-b50575164881)
Chapter 2 (#u6f3c2d76-acb0-563f-8522-0df557862119)
Chapter 3 (#ucb1908b6-9a5d-5143-8214-9d0a58d35e24)
Chapter 4 (#ub1c3dbce-61ea-5f2e-a48f-6a74a63b8e29)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
Endgame series (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_e29a52c1-f6e2-509c-8884-26a139cb40ed)
Ariadne
As I stand beside Cassandra, watching Boone’s eyes move between my face and that of my twin sister, a single thought keeps running through my mind: He’s going to die.
I’m still shocked at Cassandra’s unexpected arrival in the museum, where Boone and I have been working to extricate the alien weapon that’s been hidden there by Evrard Sauer, the scientist who was studying it after its discovery by the Nazis. Sauer is now dead, entombed in the water-filled chamber 60 meters below our feet. The same chamber from which Boone has recently escaped for the second time.
I look at the metal box Boone is holding in his hands. It’s the whole reason he descended into the room. Part of me is excited to see that he’s gotten it, and to know what’s inside it. Another part wishes he’d never found it, because I know what’s going to happen next. I’d hoped that by throwing the grenade down the shaft and into the underground room, I’d have warned Boone that something was wrong. Maybe he was too excited about finally getting the box. Maybe he thought he could help me. I’m thankful the blast didn’t kill him, which was a very real possibility, but I’m not sure it matters now.
“Put the box on the floor,” Cassandra says.
Even if we weren’t twins, I would have known this was coming. Cassandra might not be our Minoan line’s official Player, but she is a Player nonetheless. Maybe even more than I am. We trained side by side, and although I was the one who was presented with the golden horns at the choosing ceremony and have served our line to the best of my abilities, Cassandra has always longed to wear them. If she had been sent to Berlin instead of me, Boone would already be dead. Now she is toying with him, enjoying the confrontation.
Boone glances at me. I can tell he’s confused. He doesn’t know if I knew about Cassandra being here or not, if I’m working with her or still teamed up with him. I wish I could let him know that my sister’s presence here is a surprise to me too, but I don’t dare risk showing any hint of caring about what happens to him. If I do, Cassandra will make things worse. For both of us. I keep my face blank and stare back at him coldly, trying to still my wildly beating heart.
Boone crouches down, setting the box on the floor. Then he stands up again. Underneath Cassandra’s coat, which barely stretches across his shoulders, he’s wearing only boxer shorts and a thin undershirt, both of which are soaking wet. He’s been swimming around in ice-cold water, and the temperature in the room now is well below freezing. I can see him shaking as his muscles seize up and his body attempts to warm itself. He’s trying to control the trembling, but he can’t. He’s rapidly becoming hypothermic and needs to get warm. Although I want to go to him and wrap my arms around him, I can’t. I have to watch him suffer, and it makes my heart ache.
Cassandra has had her pistol trained on him this whole time. She keeps it leveled at his chest as she says to me, “Go get it.”
I don’t like her ordering me to do anything, but the situation is delicate, and I don’t want to risk upsetting her. I walk toward Boone. I consider placing myself between him and my sister, screaming at him to run and giving him a slim chance of escaping. But it would only put off his death for a short time. Cassandra would never let him get out alive. And she’d probably kill me as well for getting in her way.
When I reach Boone and the box, I kneel down and pick it up. It’s not as heavy as I expected. As I stand and back up, holding it in my hands, I risk a look at Boone. He won’t look at me. He’s staring straight ahead at Cassandra, a furious expression on his face even though his lips are bluish and I can see that he’s clenching his teeth together with enormous effort to keep them from chattering. But he still has enough strength to defiantly shrug off her coat, which puddles around his feet.
I walk back to Cassandra, who glances briefly at the box and says, “How clever of you to trick him into retrieving it for you.” She smirks at Boone. “Just like a pet dog.” She makes a woofing sound, and laughs. “Fetch, boy.”
She’s taunting him, but I know she’s also taunting me, letting me know what she thinks about my not going after the box myself. But I don’t react. Instead I smile and say, “You know I don’t like to get my hair wet if I can help it.” It’s the kind of thing she would say, childish and inappropriate given the situation, so of course she laughs.
Cassandra turns her attention back to Boone. “Unfortunately for you, we no longer need you.”
“Wait,” I say, placing my hand on her arm.
She looks at me, one eyebrow raised in question.
“I’ll do it,” I tell her. I lift my shirt and show her the bandaged wound on my stomach. “There’s a debt that requires repayment.”
Cassandra nods. I know she’s annoyed that I’m depriving her of making the kill herself, but she also recognizes that I have first right. “Do it quickly. We need to be on our way. Would you like to use my gun?”
She says this loudly enough for Boone to hear. She’s enjoying playing with him, and I’m reminded of how during our training sessions she would often let her opponents think they had a chance just before she landed a victory blow. She enjoys offering a bit of hope, then snatching it away. I shake my head as I set the box down, reach into my boot, and pull out the knife tucked inside. “You know I prefer a blade.”
She laughs again as I turn and walk back to Boone. “He’s not a kolios, Ariadne. Make sure you gut him properly.”
Another taunt, a reminder of the time we were four and our grandfather took us fishing and I wouldn’t stick my knife in the flapping, gasping mackerel I hauled out of the ocean on my line. I felt bad for it. Before I could throw it back, Cassandra grabbed it and plunged a knife into its belly, slitting it open and scraping its insides out before it was even dead. At dinner, she’d eaten it fried, with lemon, grinning at me from across the table as our grandfather boasted about how brave she’d been.
I stop in front of Boone. He hasn’t said a word, and I know this is mostly because he can’t. The cold is forcing his body to conserve its resources in an attempt to warm itself. I also know that if he truly thought I was going to kill him, he would find the strength to fight me. I wonder if Cassandra knows he’s a Player. I doubt it. If she did, she would kill him herself, despite my request, so that she could claim him as a trophy. But who does she think he is? And how did she know we were here in the first place? I’ve been wondering that since I turned to find her standing behind me, looking at me as if she’d come into the kitchen and caught me secretly eating one of the melomakarona our mother and aunts make at Christmastime. But there’s been no time for explanations.
Right now I have to concentrate on putting on a show for her. Whatever I do, she has to believe that Boone is really dead. If she doesn’t, she’ll finish him off herself. But how am I going to do that? Unless his body somehow disappears, she’ll be able to check whether or not he’s still breathing.
I look at the entrance to the air shaft, which is just behind Boone, and I get an idea. I don’t know if he can survive another trip into the water. He’s barely able to stand now. But it’s his only chance. Our only chance. Because now there’s no denying it—we’re a team. Who we’re fighting for, I still don’t know. And if he doesn’t survive the next few minutes, it won’t matter. I pray to the gods that he does make it.
I hold the knife up so he can see it. With my eyes, I try to tell him to trust me. I say, “I’ll do you the favor of reuniting you with your brother.” He looks at me, and his brow furrows for a moment. Then he gives the slightest of nods, and I know that he understands what has to happen.
I stab him in the stomach. He bends as if the knife has really gone in, but really I’ve only grazed him. Just enough to make the blood flow. I get some on my fingers and wipe it on the blade. Then I pretend to pull the knife out and I shove Boone toward the shaft. He spins, holding his hands to his stomach, so that his back is to me and Cassandra, and staggers the short distance to the opening. He plunges headfirst into it. There’s a soft splash as he hits the water, then nothing.
It all happens very quickly, and I’m not sure it’s convincing enough. I turn back to my sister, wipe the blade on my pants, and return the knife to my boot. The whole time, I expect Cassandra to express her doubts that Boone is really dead. However, all she does is lower her gun and say, “Who was he?”
“An American,” I answer. “A soldier. Not a very good one.”
“He couldn’t have been completely incompetent,” Cassandra says. “He wounded a Player.”
“A lucky strike,” I say as I retrieve the box. “And now he’s dead, or soon will be.”
“What did you mean about his brother?”
So she did hear. “His brother was also a soldier,” I lie, although this is not entirely untrue. Jackson Boone was a Player, like his brother. “He was killed in the war.”
“It sounds like an interesting story,” Cassandra says. “You can tell it to me on the trip.”
She’s walking up the stairs. I follow her. I hate leaving Boone behind, but I really have no choice. I have to keep pretending that he means nothing to me. Not knowing whether he’s alive or dead is horrible, but for now I have to bury all my emotions as deeply as possible. Not only is Cassandra trained as a Player, but she’s my twin. We have a bond that is beyond the normal sibling relationship. Each of us knows what the other is feeling and thinking without having to ask. Sometimes, this is a gift. Other times, like when we had to fight each other in training, it could go either way. Now it puts me at a disadvantage. If I lie to her and she detects any trace of nervousness, she’ll know. Ironically, after everything I’ve been through in the past 48 hours, the most difficult thing is going to be pretending things are normal between me and my own sister.
Cassandra makes her way through the New Museum as if she’s been here a hundred times. I’m not surprised. She has a photographic memory, and I’m sure she’s memorized every map she could find of the building. I still don’t know, however, how she knew to come here in the first place, or why. What I do know is that she’s dying for me to ask her, so I don’t. We’ve only been in each other’s company for 20 minutes, and already we’ve slipped into our familiar patterns.
“It’s too bad about Europa,” Cassandra says as we exit the museum. “Also about Theron, Cilla, and Misha.” She looks at me, and I know she’s trying to read my expression. “Four Minoans dead. I hope what’s in this box is worth it.”
That she is placing the blame for the deaths of our linesmen on me is obvious, and it makes me furious. She has no idea what I’ve been dealing with since arriving in Berlin, how difficult the past six months have been working inside the MGB. She’s brave, yes, and capable. But while I’ve been here, risking my life every day for our line, she’s been at home in Crete.
“Every war has its casualties,” I say, keeping my voice even.
“And Sauer?” Cassandra asks.
“Dead,” I tell her. “Suicide.”
“Anyone else?”
Again I think about Boone’s brother, whose body is still in the trunk of a car parked nearby. I think too of Lottie and Bernard, Jackson’s wife and son, who are waiting in a borrowed apartment for us to return. If Boone can’t get out of the museum alive, what will become of them? They aren’t my problem now that I have the box containing the weapon, but I find myself worrying about them anyway. I know Boone has given them instructions on what to do in the event we don’t come back, and I hope they’ll be safe.
“No,” I say. “Not from our side, anyway.”
“How many sides are there?” Cassandra asks.
“I’m not certain,” I say, and this is the truth. “Things became complicated.”
“Which is why I’m here,” my sister says. “To uncomplicate them.”
There they are, the words she’s been wanting to say to me all along. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist forever. This is what she’s been waiting for, the chance to tell me how I’ve failed.
“When we couldn’t reach Theron, Cilla, or Europa, we knew that something had gone wrong,” Cassandra continues. “And then we had word that Misha had been killed.”
So there was someone else inside the MGB spying for them. For us. I’m not surprised. In fact, I assumed there was. I do wonder who it is, though. I don’t ask. I’m not ready to give Cassandra even the smallest bit of satisfaction.
“The council decided it would be best for me to come see if you were in trouble,” she says.
“Of course,” I say. “And since you look like me, it would make it easy for you to assume my role as Player without arousing the suspicions of anyone else who might be involved.”
“The look on the American’s face when he thought he was seeing double was worth the trip,” Cassandra says. “It was almost as if I’d broken his heart.”
Her words are not lost on me. Again, though, I ignore them. We’ve reached the street. Cassandra stops at a car, takes some keys from her pocket, and unlocks the door. She gets inside, and I walk around to the other side. When she pushes the door open, I get in. “Are we driving back to Heraklion?” I ask as she starts the engine.
“Train,” she says as she pulls away from the curb. “It will take a little more than two days, so we’ll have lots of time to catch up. I have a bag for you, so we can go directly to Berlin Friedrichstraße. Unless there’s something else you need to do.”
She looks over at me. I look back at her. “No,” I say. I pat the box I’m holding in my lap. “Sauer is dead. We have the weapon. That’s what I came for.”
Cassandra grins. “Good,” she says. “This will be fun. Just the two of us, with nothing to do but talk. It will be like when we were children.”
That’s what I’m afraid of, I think as I grin back at her and say, “I’m glad you came.”
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_7cf1c97e-91a0-5019-93e1-a5215fba48e3)
Boone
As I sink through the water inside the air shaft, all I can think about is how cold I am, how my muscles won’t do what I tell them to, how hopeless I feel. Without any light, I’m in total blackness. I can’t turn around in the cramped space, so I have to keep going down, back into the flooded chamber where Sauer’s body is. Then I have two choices: I can either come back up the shaft, or I can go back into the elevator and climb up the cable again. Neither one seems possible. I barely made it up the elevator cable the last time. Now my body is even more worn out and damaged.
To make things worse, the only thing waiting for me if I do manage to get out is a whole bunch of problems. My brother is dead. The weapon I worked so hard to find is gone. The thought of going home and telling my council that I failed my assignment, and that the Minoans now have the weapon, is horrible. Even worse is the idea of telling my mother that Jackson didn’t actually die in the war, but that now he’s dead, and it’s because I couldn’t save him.
Then there’s Ariadne. I don’t want to believe that she betrayed me, that she played me like a fool in order to get her hands on the weapon. And part of me doesn’t believe that she did. She could easily have killed me, or let her sister kill me, but she didn’t. Why? I’m no longer any use to her. She doesn’t need me. Any good Player would have used the opportunity to take me out. And Ariadne is an excellent Player. So why am I still alive? Why did she give me a chance?
Maybe, I think, she doesn’t believe I can make it out. Maybe she’s hoping the freezing water and the darkness will do what she couldn’t bring herself to do.
And she might be right. I can feel myself growing more and more exhausted. It would be easy to just close my eyes and wait for the air in my lungs to run out. I can practically hear the cold whispering in my ear, telling me to give up. It would be so easy.
I feel myself pass through the bottom of the shaft and into the chamber where, somewhere, Sauer’s body still floats. I can’t see anything, can’t even really orient myself to know which way to go. The explosion caused by the grenade Ariadne dropped down the shaft has filled the room with pieces of debris, which further confuses me, as things keep bumping against my body. And I’m running out of time.
I feel my thoughts slowing down. Instead of thinking clearly and quickly, making decisions, I’m lost in a fog, following one idea for a short time and then stopping. The darkness is closing in. All I want is to go to sleep and wake up somewhere else.
Then the voice of Fawn Flowers, my harshest trainer, cuts through the darkness. “The human body has limits,” she says, and I instantly picture her standing over me as I lie in the mud. It’s sleeting, I’m soaked through, and I’m completely worn out after running for what seems like a thousand miles through a snowstorm. My feet are covered in blisters that tear and burn with every step, my hair is frozen into icicles that sting my eyes, and now she tells me I have to turn around and run all the way back the way I came.
Fawn doesn’t help me. She just stands there, scowling as she lectures me. “No matter how strong a body is, it can become too damaged to work. But sometimes the mind can push us past those limits. If you ever get into a situation where you think you can’t physically go on, think about the person you love most in the world. Think about how you need to get from where you are to where that person is. Don’t think about how tired you are, or how much you hurt, or how impossible it seems. Just think about that person and start moving.”
That day, I thought about my mother. I pictured her waiting for me back at our house. I thought about never seeing her again. Then I imagined the look on her face when I came through the door. I kept that image in my head as I forced myself to get to my knees, then to my feet. I kept my mother’s face in front of me as I stumbled a few feet, then as I began to walk. I kept telling myself that she was so close. When my blistered feet screamed for me to stop, I ignored them. When I slipped in the snow and fell, I shut my eyes and saw my mother smiling at me, telling me how much she loved me, and I got up again.
I ran the whole way home like that, one step at a time. And when I finally did reach our front door, I went inside and collapsed in my mother’s arms. Even though my body was wrecked, I’d never felt so happy.
I think about her now. I see her face, looking at me with that expression she has that means she’s worried but doesn’t want to let me know. I can tell she wants me to come home. I try to move my arms and legs, to move toward her, but I feel so heavy. I’m being dragged down into the black water, and my mother’s face starts to fade away.
Then something unexpected happens—I’m looking at Ariadne. She’s standing in front of me just like she was a few minutes ago. Her eyes are locked on mine, and without saying a word, I know she’s asking me to trust her. And I do. I know I shouldn’t. Every Player instinct I have is screaming at me to fight her and her sister, even though I have almost no chance of winning. Instead I look into her eyes and know that I’m here now because she cares about me, that she sent me back into the cold and the dark because it was the only chance she had of saving me.
Suddenly I want more than anything to be with her again. She and Cassandra are probably on their way out of the museum already. I don’t know where they’re going, or how I’ll find them. I only know that I have to try.
At the other end of the room is the elevator and the shaft leading up to an office. But I don’t think I can climb back up the elevator cable again. In the room above me are my clothes, and getting back into them is my best chance of surviving. If I can get back up the air shaft.
First I have to find the opening. I swim up until my outstretched hand touches the ceiling tile. Fortunately, I haven’t moved too far away from where I entered the room, and a few moments later I find the edge of the shaft opening. I swim into it and kick as hard as I can, which isn’t very hard at all. Still, I move up, and every inch brings me closer to air. I keep Ariadne’s face in my mind and keep going.
When my head breaks the surface of the water, I gasp in air. My burning lungs expand, and the pounding in my head and chest calms. But I’m not safe yet. Far from it. I still have to get up the rest of the shaft and into the cellar. The longer I stay in the water, the harder it will be, so although it seems impossible, I set my back against the cold metal wall of the shaft, force my knees up until my feet are pressed against the other side, and slide upward one agonizing inch at a time.
The entire time I’m working my way up the shaft, Ariadne is there in my head, urging me on. I never take my eyes from hers, and this is the only thing that keeps me going. Even then, there are a couple of times when I don’t think I can go any farther. That’s when her voice fills my head, telling me not to give up. For her, I don’t. For her, I keep going even though I can no longer feel anything in my fingers or toes.
Then I’m at the end. It takes everything I have left to reach up and pull myself over the edge of the shaft and onto the floor. I crawl to the pile of my clothes and pull them on with fingers I can see now are torn and bloody from clawing at the walls of the air shaft. When I manage to get my coat on, I start to feel just the tiniest bit more alive. I have on clothes. I’ve survived. And I have a purpose.
I stagger up the steps and through the halls of the museum. Outside, dawn is still some time away, and the world is gray and still. I find my way back to the car and try not to think about my brother’s body in the trunk as I get in and start the engine. I turn the heater up as high as it will go and wait for the air to warm up. When my hands are working well enough to operate the shifter, I put the car in gear and drive back to the apartment we’ve borrowed from Lottie’s acquaintance Anaïs—where, I hope, Lottie is still waiting.
She is. When I come in, stumbling, she runs over and helps me into the bathroom.
She starts the water flowing into the bathtub, then helps me take off my clothes, as my fingers still aren’t working quite right. When I’m down to just my boxer shorts, she helps me into the tub. I sink down until only my head is above the water, letting my frozen body thaw. Lottie perches on the toilet, watching me.
“I’m not going to drown,” I promise her, trying to lighten the mood.
“What happened?” she asks. “Where’s the girl?”
“We found the weapon,” I say. “Well, parts of it. And some plans.”
Her face brightens for a moment, and she opens her mouth to speak.
“But there were complications. One complication, anyway. A big one.”
I tell her everything: about Cassandra, and about my trip back down the air shaft into the flooded chamber. Her eyes widen with each new detail. When I’m done, she says, “So the weapon is lost. The Minoans have it.”
“For now,” I say.
“You’re going to go after them?”
I nod. “That’s my plan.”
“How will you even find them?” she asks. “And if you do, how will you get the weapon back? Once they have it, surely they’ll keep it protected.”
“Of course they will,” I say. “As for finding them, I have some ideas.”
Lottie shakes her head. “I hope you have a secret weapon.”
I picture Ariadne. “I think I might,” I say.
She sighs. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Never better.”
She stands up. “I’ll go make something to eat, then.”
She leaves, and I close my eyes. The truth is, I’m still cold. I feel like I’ll never truly be warm again. But I’m alive. The water feels great, but I know I can’t stay here long. There is a lot to be done, and with every second that passes, Ariadne and Cassandra are getting farther and farther away. I need to go after them, and soon.
There’s a knock on the door. Lottie opens it and steps inside. She’s holding a small stack of folded clothes, which she sets on a chair. “Apparently, Anaïs has a gentleman friend,” she says. “I found these in one of the dressers.” She bends to retrieve my pile of wet things. “I’ll hang these up to dry.”
I stay in the bathtub until the water begins to cool, then get out and dry myself with one of the towels. I dress in the clothes Lottie has found. They’re a little big for me, but they’re warm. When I’m dressed, I go out into the other room. Lottie is in the kitchen, stirring something in a pan on the stove.
“There were tins of soup in the cupboard,” she says as she dips a spoon into the pot.
“I’m starting to feel like Goldilocks,” I say as I take a seat at the table. “I wonder what Anaïs will think when she comes home and finds people have been sleeping in her bed, wearing the clothes in her dresser, and eating her food.”
I take a bite of the soup. It’s made with beef, hearty and thick, and I eat half the bowl before I say another word. Lottie sits down across from me and waits. I can tell she’s anxious to hear why I’ve returned alone, but she doesn’t rush me. When I’m done, I push the bowl away. “We need to talk about what happens next,” I say. “Do you and Bernard have somewhere safe to go?”
“Safe?” Lottie says. “Safe from whom?”
“Too many people know about the weapon,” I remind her. I think about Jackson’s body lying in the trunk of the car. She can’t have forgotten what happened. “If someone thinks you know anything about where it is, they might try to harm you.”
Lottie’s face hardens, and I know she’s now thinking about Jackson as well. “There are places where we will be safe,” she says stonily. “And where we can bury Jackson.”
“Where?”
She looks like she doesn’t want to tell me. “In France,” she says.
“I’ll need to know where you are,” I say. “In case I need your help.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” I admit. “Maybe nothing. But when this is over, I know my family would like to meet you and Bernard.”
Lottie shakes her head. “I don’t think they would like that at all,” she says. “They will blame me.”
I can’t tell if she really believes this or if she’s the one who doesn’t want anything to do with us. I don’t argue with her. There will be time for that later. Right now, we both need to get going. There’s one more thing I need to discuss with her first.
“What can you tell me about Karl Ott?” I ask her.
Lottie shrugs. “I’ve known him since we were children. Our fathers worked together.”
I sense that this is something else she’s reluctant to talk about. But I need information, and so I press on. “What’s his real name?”
She hesitates a moment before saying, “Tobias Falkenrath.”
“Jackson said his father was imprisoned by the Allies.”
“Yes,” Lottie says. “The Soviets.”
“Could Ott be working with someone?”
Lottie looks at me and wrinkles her brow. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody tipped off the people who came and took you from the safe house,” I say.
“It could have been any number of people,” Lottie replies tersely.
“Yes, it could,” I say. But I have my doubts. I can’t help thinking about how Ott disappeared so quickly during the fight at the factory, and how determined he was to get the weapon.
“Karl wouldn’t betray us,” Lottie says, as if the matter is settled. She stands up. “I need to get Bernard ready to leave.”
I don’t argue with her. Now that I know Ott’s real name, I can find out more about him on my own. Still, I’m not happy having his whereabouts unknown. He’s a wild card, and I’d feel better if I knew what he was up to.
While Lottie goes and wakes Bernard, I wash the dishes and put them away. When Lottie and Bernard are ready, I make one last trip through the apartment, making things look the way they did when we arrived. My clothes are still damp, and I don’t want to put them on and risk being cold again, so I’ll be borrowing Anaïs’s friend’s clothes permanently. Hopefully, she’ll just convince herself he took them, and won’t even know someone has been here. Not that it matters. Still, I’ve been trained not to leave any evidence behind, and it’s important to stay sharp.
We leave the apartment and go down to the car. Before Lottie and Bernard get in, I give them each a hug. I also give Lottie some of the cash I took from the safe house. “This should be enough to get you to France,” I tell her.
She tucks the money into the pocket of her coat, then hands me a piece of paper. “The address where we’ll be,” she says. Then she kisses me on each cheek. “Good luck, Sam.”
She gets into the car, starts it, and drives away. I watch until she reaches the end of the street and disappears. Once she’s out of sight, I turn and start walking. I’ll be leaving Berlin myself shortly. First, though, I need to make a call.
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_da169b3d-1304-5b40-8959-9d0db4bda82f)
Ariadne
The waters of the Aegean are choppy, as they often are in winter, and the caïque rocks a little as we make the crossing from Piraeus to Heraklion. But after more than 48 hours cooped up in a train compartment, it’s a pleasure to be out in the open air. I only wish my homecoming were under different circumstances.
Manos Theodorakis is at the helm of the Amphitrite, and as we motor, he talks to me and Cassandra about the civil war that has been waging in Greece for the past four years.
“I think we are nearing the end,” he says. “Now that Stalin has withdrawn support from Tito, the Communists will not be able to maintain their positions. Already they are calling for Vafiadis to be replaced. It’s only a matter of time.”
Ianthe Pavlou, who is sitting at the small table in the cabin with me and Cassandra, takes one of the pieces of the weapon from the box that sits open in front of her, and inspects it. “If the rest of the country had fought the way Cretans did against the Germans, the war would have ended much sooner.”
Ianthe is talking about the Battle of Crete, which occurred in the summer of 1941, when the Nazis sent paratroopers to invade the island in an attempt to secure it as a seaport. They were met with fierce resistance from the local population—most of whom are of the Minoan line—who defended their ancestral home and defeated the invaders. Cassandra and I were only 10, but we had already been training for several years, and we assisted the older fighters by acting as scouts and relaying information back and forth. Ianthe, who is older than we are by 15 years, killed a dozen soldiers herself, and has a thick scar running down the left side of her face as a reminder.
She sets the piece in her hand back in the box and stands up. “I need a break,” she says. “Ari, want to come outside for a smoke?”
I can tell that she wants to talk to me alone. I nod and follow her out of the cabin and onto the deck. Ianthe leans against the rail that runs along the side of the boat. She takes a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and taps one out. She offers it to me, but I shake my head. She puts the pack away, places the cigarette in her mouth, and cups her hand around it as she strikes a match and touches it to the tip. When it takes, she tosses the match into the sea and blows out a cloud of smoke.
Even though it’s winter, the temperature is warm and the skies are blue. The change from Berlin is remarkable. I realize how much I’ve missed Greece after more than half a year away. I look out over the seemingly endless expanse of the sea. We’ve been motoring for only a few hours, so Crete is not yet visible, but I search the horizon for its familiar hills anyway. At the bow, dolphins break the surface, swimming alongside us, and it feels as if they’ve come to escort me home.
I should be elated. The weapon is in our hands, and it could change everything about how Endgame is played. But the worry that began when I first saw my sister in the museum has slowly grown into a feeling of dread. During the train trip, Cassandra acted as if everything was fine, catching me up on the news from home. Never once did she ask about Boone, or for details about what occurred in Berlin. Rather than being comforting, this lack of questioning has only made me more wary. It’s as if she is trying too hard to make me feel at ease, which has had the opposite result. Equally distressing is that when I asked her why and how the council had decided to send her to assist me, she said only that she didn’t know their reasons, and that I would have to ask them myself.
“How was the journey from Berlin?” Ianthe asks.
“Uneventful,” I tell her.
She laughs. “You mean boring,” she says. “I imagine it was, after everything.”
She’s watching me. She knows something. I wonder how much. I decide I might as well find out. “What have you heard?”
She takes a drag on her cigarette before replying. “Four dead,” she says.
I nod. What is there to say to this? Again I wonder how everyone knows what happened, when I’ve made no report myself. But I don’t want to appear anxious, and so I say, “I hope what’s in that box is worth it. Can you tell anything?”
Ianthe is a scientist, like Sauer. Her specialty is ancient civilizations. She shakes her head. “No,” she admits. “But there are items in our collection that might be of some assistance. Things we’ve found over the years. We’ll see.”
She’s being evasive. I can tell by the way she turns away from me and pretends to be looking at something in the water. I don’t know if she really doesn’t know anything, or if for some reason she doesn’t trust me enough to tell me what she thinks. I stand beside her and look at the water too. It flashes in the sunlight, and the smell of salt and fish tangs the air around us.
“There’s going to be an inquiry,” Ianthe says, her voice almost a whisper. She doesn’t look at me. “I thought you should know.”
So that’s it. Now I know why Cassandra was sent to Berlin. Someone thinks I’ve done something wrong, made mistakes. That I’ve failed as the Player. I’m not surprised. It’s what I’ve been most afraid of. Having it confirmed doesn’t make me feel better, but at least now I know what’s waiting for me when we reach the island.
There’s no point in asking Ianthe any questions. She’s most likely told me everything she knows. She’s not part of the council, and therefore not privy to their discussions. Probably she’s heard the rumor from someone else. She’s only told me now because of our friendship.
Now she turns to me and smiles. “I wouldn’t worry,” she says. “It’s routine when there are deaths.”
I nod. She’s right. However, the knot in my chest isn’t loosening. There’s something more going on. What it is, I won’t know until I’m standing before the council. I expect that will happen shortly after our arrival in Heraklion. They will want to talk to me while the details of the past week are fresh in my mind. Not that I’m likely to forget them.
“If you two stare at that water much longer, Poseidon himself will rise up and claim you as his brides.”
I turn to see Cassandra watching us. I wonder how long she’s been there, and if she’s somehow heard any of our conversation. I don’t think so. Now she comes and joins us at the railing. She’s right beside me, our shoulders touching.
“Remember the time the trainers took us out on a boat to practice deep diving, and when we came up, the boat was gone?”
“We had to swim twenty kilometers back to land,” I say. “In the dark. When I said I couldn’t swim any farther, you told me that if I didn’t keep going, a sea monster would reach up and drag me down to eat me.”
“And it might have,” Cassandra says. “Who knows?” She laughs. “Speaking of sea monsters, I bet Theia Astraea is making kalamarakia krasata for your welcome-home dinner.”
Again, my sister’s cheerfulness is unnerving. If she knew that the council was unhappy with me, she would normally not miss the opportunity to make me feel bad about their displeasure. Acting as if this is an ordinary return from a successful mission is not normal. I catch Ianthe’s eye for a moment. The look on her face is one of pity, which worries me as much as Cassandra’s behavior.
“I’m going to sit in the bow for a while,” I say. “I’m a little tired.”
I feel Ianthe and Cassandra watching my back as I walk away. Will they talk about me? It annoys me that I’m now suspicious, that I’m letting the fact that the council is holding an inquiry bother me. It’s not unexpected, but Ianthe’s warning has made me uneasy.
When I reach the bow, I settle into a nest of fishing nets, curling up with my head resting on a buoy. I stare up at the sky, watching the clouds move slowly across the blue expanse like sheep on a hillside. The sun warms my face and makes me drowsy, and soon, despite my worries, I fall asleep.
I dream about Boone.
I’m in the flooded underground chamber. I’ve gone there to try to rescue him. It’s dark and cold, and the water is filled with debris: papers and pieces of things that were hidden behind the cabinet doors before the grenade explosion ripped them open. I swim through the room, feeling my way with my hands. I touch a body, but it’s not Boone. It’s Sauer. His dead eyes stare at me, his mouth open and his tongue swollen from the poison he took. I push away from him and turn. Boone is behind me. When I see him, I’m filled with joy.
Then I realize that he’s dead too. His body hangs in the water, his limbs limp as a marionette’s. His eyes are closed. I reach out for him, and his eyes blink open. They’re white, as if they’ve frozen. His hands grasp my wrists, the bloated fingers like manacles of ice. I fight him, but he doesn’t let go. I scream, and the air in my lungs bubbles out. I try to breathe, but there’s only water. It fills my mouth, and I choke. Boone opens his mouth, and even underwater I can hear him laugh as he watches me drown.
I’m awakened by the bumping of the caïque against a dock. For a moment I’m confused about where I am. Then I remember, and I realize that we’ve arrived. We’re on Crete. Home. I climb out of my makeshift bed, stretch to rid myself of the lingering bad feelings from my dream, and try not to think about whether what I saw was prophetic or just a nightmare. I very much hope Boone is still alive, but I can’t think about him at the moment.
I go and help Ianthe and Cassandra moor the boat, tying the bow and stern lines to the cleats anchored on the dock. Once the caïque is secured, Ianthe gathers up the box with the pieces of the weapon in it and we begin the walk to my parents’ house. When we’re halfway there, Ianthe and Manos break off to go their own ways. I hate to see the box leave my sight, but I know that it’s safe with Ianthe, and it’s one less thing I have to worry about. For the moment, anyway.
Cassandra and I don’t talk, but she hums a tune as we walk. It takes me a moment to place the song. It’s one we made up when we were children, about a girl who goes into the forest to find and kill a monster.
“You’re singing the hunting song,” I say.
“Am I?” she says. “That’s odd. I haven’t thought about that in years.”
She sounds happy, as if she’s the one coming home with a trophy. Which I suppose she is. But is it the box, or is it me?
When we reach our home, she lets me go in first. I take only a few steps inside before my mother appears and takes me in her arms, smothering my face with kisses. My father is next, and the two of them hug me so tightly I feel like an olive being pressed for its oil. When they finally let me go, my mother stands and looks me up and down.
“You’ve lost too much weight,” she declares.
“It’s because I didn’t have your moussaka and keftedes to make me fat,” I tell her.
“You’re in luck,” my father says. “She and your theia have made enough of both to feed the entire Greek army.”
I follow my mother into the kitchen, where my aunt is standing by the stove. Like me and Cassandra, my mother and her sister are twins. Astraea opens her arms and I endure the hugging and kissing all over again. As soon as she’s done greeting me, though, my aunt hands me a wooden spoon and says, “Don’t let the meatballs burn.”
It feels good to be tossed right back into normal life. Nobody asks me about Berlin. Nobody talks about Endgame. We cook while my mother and aunt bicker over the best way to season the lamb. We drink glasses of sweet white wine. It all feels familiar and welcome, and it takes me a while to realize that there really is enough food for a large group.
“Who is all this for?” I ask.
As if in answer, there’s a knock on the front door. My father disappears, and when he comes back, he’s accompanied by five people: Effie Kakos, Nemo Stathakis, Ursula Tassi, Xenia Papadaki, and Venedict Economides. Individually, they are my third-year mathematics teacher, a bookseller, one of my trainers, the great-grandmother of my best friend, and the priest at the Agios Minas Cathedral. Collectively, they are the Minoan council.
“Welcome home, Player,” Xenia Papadaki says as she embraces me and kisses me on both cheeks.
The others are more formal, shaking my hand. I notice that they greet Cassandra in a similar manner. Perhaps it is my imagination, but it seems they might be even more enthusiastic in their congratulations to her, as if she is responsible for bringing them the weapon. Or maybe, I think, they’re congratulating her on returning her wayward sister to them.
I try not to think about it too much as my father shepherds us to the table, where we sit. Cassandra and I are seated across from each other, and throughout dinner I occasionally look at her to see if she shows any indication of this being her victory celebration and not mine. Each time, she returns my look and lifts her glass of wine in salute. I have several glasses as well, and this does much to ease my tension.
The food is delicious. The conversation alternates between politics, local gossip, and the coming new year. Again, nobody asks me about my mission. We eat for several hours. Then the table is cleared and plates of bougatsa and loukoumades are brought out along with small cups of dark, rich coffee. Only then does Effie Kakos, who as the senior member of the council is sitting at the head of the table, say, “Now, Ariadne, let us talk about this Samuel Boone.”
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_d6a8ef1e-c5ae-559f-b4c5-f1a63992e54d)
Boone
Like Berlin, Budapest is recovering from the war very slowly. Over a period of 50 days at the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the city was virtually destroyed by fighting between the German and Soviet armies. Its buildings still lie in ruins, and its people walk through the city like ghosts haunting what I can tell was once a beautiful place. And, despite the devastation, it’s still beautiful. They’re rebuilding, and one day I want to come back and see it the way it should look, when the scars are healed.
Even now there are signs that the city and its people are coming back to life. The new year is two days away, and that always makes people hopeful. In my family, we each make a list of things we want to happen or to do in the new year. We put the list away, then take it out again on New Year’s Eve and see how much of it has been achieved. My list from last year is tucked away in a drawer of my dresser back home. My list for the current year is sitting in front of me on the table in the café where I’m sitting, waiting for the person I’ve come here to meet.
I look at what I’ve written so far.
Find Ariadne
Get the box
Learn Spanish
Finish reading Moby-Dick
The last item has been on my list every year for the past five years, ever since my father told me I should read it because it’s the greatest American novel ever written. I hate not finishing things, so I keep putting it there hoping it will give me the incentive I need to get through Melville’s doorstop of a book. But in all this time, I’ve only made it through the first 100 pages, so I suspect it will be there again in 1949. I don’t know how the guy found so much to say about whales.
As for the first two things on my list, I don’t know yet how I’m going to get them done, but I’m determined to do it. Only now, looking at my handwriting on the scrap of paper, do I realize that I’ve put finding Ariadne first. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe not. The longer I’m apart from her, the more worried I get that I’ll never see her again. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and it’s making me more than a little anxious that perhaps I’m letting my emotions get in the way of what should be my primary concern—retrieving the weapon and taking it home. In order to get the box, I need to find her, so it’s all tied together. But what if it wasn’t? What if I had to choose one thing over the other? Would I look for her first, or the box?
“It’s a little late for writing your Christmas list for Santa, isn’t it?”
A man pulls out the chair across from me and sits down. I quickly pick up the piece of paper, fold it, and stick it in the pocket of my coat. “Yeah, well, I never get that BB gun I ask for anyway,” I say.
The man is older than I am, probably in his forties. He’s tall and thin, with an angular face, dark eyes, and close-cropped black hair. His name—at least the one I’ve been given—is Charles Kenney.
“Your journey here was uneventful, I assume,” Kenney says.
I know what he’s asking. He wants to know if I think I was followed. “Pretty boring,” I tell him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier,” he replies. “I had business to attend to elsewhere.”
It’s been three days since I contacted my line back in America via shortwave radio. Using Morse code, I let them know that I’d located the item I was searching for, but that it had been lost again. I didn’t tell them how. I said I could get it back, though. They responded by telling me to go to Budapest and meet the man who is now looking at me intently from across the table. I assume he’s Cahokian, but I’ve never heard of him, and don’t know who he is or what he does, so I wait for him to tell me.
“We’ve met before,” he says. “Although you wouldn’t remember it. You were only four years old, and it was only for a few minutes. I was one of the people who evaluated your brother to determine his potential as a Player. I left America soon after, and have been living in various places in Europe ever since. I’m sorry about what happened to Jackson.”
I wonder if he’s referring to the story we were all told—that Jackson died in the war—or if he knows about the incident in Berlin. I don’t know what, if anything, I should say about that. Or about so many other things. Kenney is connected to my line, so I should tell him everything. Instead I find myself keeping secrets.
“Sauer is dead,” I say, deciding to avoid the topic of my brother altogether for now. “He committed suicide in the room where the box was hidden, after triggering a booby trap designed to kill anyone in the room. He didn’t want us to have it.”
“Us?” Kenney says.
“The Cahokians,” I say, quickly catching my mistake. I can’t mention Ariadne or the Minoans to him.
“Ah,” he says, nodding, as if maybe I meant something else. “I see. And did he say why?”
“He said it was too dangerous for anyone to have.”
“And yet he never destroyed it himself,” Kenney says. “Don’t you find that interesting?”
I suddenly feel as if I’m being tested. I don’t like it. “It was the most important thing he ever worked on,” I answer. “He probably couldn’t bring himself to do it.”
“Possibly,” Kenney agrees, although he sounds doubtful. “Or perhaps he was keeping it safe for someone else, and feared that if we took possession of it, the other party would never get it back.”
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