Brad Meltzer - The Zero Game

“No idea,” she says. “I figured he was with you.”

“They’re on a plane,” Janos said into his phone as he stormed out of the Hotel George, signaling the doorman for a cab.

“How do you know?” Sauls asked on the other line.

“Believe me — I know.”

“Who told you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Actually, it does.”

Janos paused, refusing to answer. “Just be content with the fact that I know.”

“Don’t treat me like a schmuck,” Sauls warned. “Suddenly, the magician can’t reveal his tricks?”

“Not when the assholes backstage are always opening their mouths.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Sell any good Renoirs lately?” Janos asked.

Sauls stopped. “That was a year and a half ago. And it was a Morisot.”

“I’m well aware what it was — especially when it almost got me killed,” Janos pointed out. This wasn’t the first time he and Sauls had worked together. But as Janos knew, if they couldn’t get back in control soon, it easily could be their last.

“Just tell me how you-”

“Redial on Harris’s phone said he was talking to the mayor.”

“Aw, piss,” Sauls moaned. “You think he’s going to Dakota?”

As a cab stopped in front of him and the doorman opened the door, Janos didn’t answer.

“I don’t believe it,” Sauls added. “I got an embassy dinner tonight, and they’re fuckin’-” He cut himself off. “Where’re you now?”

“In transit,” Janos said as he tossed his leather duffel into the backseat.

“Well, you better get your ass to South Dakota before they-”

Janos hit the End button and slapped his phone shut. After his run-in with the Capitol Police, he already had one headache. He didn’t need another. Sliding inside the cab and slamming the door, he pulled a copy of MG World magazine from his duffel, flipped to a feature story on a restored 1964 MGB roadster, and lost himself in the details of adding a smaller steering wheel to complement the car’s diminutive size. It was the one thing that brought calm to Janos’s day. Unlike people, machines could be controlled.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked.

Janos glanced up from the magazine for barely a moment. “National Airport,” he replied. “And do me a favor — try to avoid the potholes…”

The South Dakota sky is pitch black by the time our Chevy Suburban turns west onto Interstate 90, and the windshield is already covered with the rat-a-tat-tat of dead bugs kamikaze-ing toward the headlights. Thanks to FedEx, the Suburban was waiting for us when we landed, and since it’s their rental, we didn’t have to put down a license or credit card. In fact, when I told them that the Senator was trying to be more conscious of cultivating his farm-boy image, they were more than happy to cancel the private driver and just give us the car instead. Anything to keep the Senator happy. “Yessiree,” I say to Viv, who’s sitting in the passenger seat next to me. “Senator Stevens would much prefer to drive himself.”

Refusing to say a word, Viv stares straight out the front window and keeps her arms crossed in front of her chest. After four hours of similar treatment on the plane, I’m used to the silence, but the further we get from the lights of Rapid City, the more disconcerting it gets. And not just because of Viv’s mood. Once we passed the exit for Mount Rushmore, the bright lamps on the highway started appearing less and less frequently. First they were every hundred or so feet… then every few hundred… and now — I haven’t seen one for miles. Same with other cars. It’s barely nine o’clock local time, but as our headlights joust through the darkness, there’s not another soul in sight.

“You sure this is right?” Viv asks as we follow a sign for Highway 85.

“I’m doing my best,” I tell her. But as the road narrows to two lanes, I glance over and notice that her arms are no longer crossed in front of her chest. Instead, her hands grip the strap of her seat belt where it runs diagonally across her chest. Holding on for dear life.

“Is this right?” she repeats anxiously, turning toward me for the first time in five hours. She sits higher in the seat than I do, and as she says the words, her saucer-cup eyes practically glow in the darkness. Right there, the adolescent who’s mad I got her into this snaps back into the little girl who’s just plain scared.

It’s been a long time since I was seventeen, but if there’s one thing I remember, it was the need for simple reassurance.

“We’re doing fine,” I reply, forcing confidence into my voice. “No lie.”

She smiles faintly and looks back out the front window. I’m not sure if she believes it, but at this point — after traveling this long — she’ll take anything she can get.

Up ahead, the two-lane road swerves to the right, then back to the left. It’s not until my headlights bounce off the enormous cliff sides on either side of us that I realize we’re weaving our way through a canyon. Viv leans forward in her seat, craning her neck and looking up through the windshield. Her eye catches something, and she leans forward a bit further.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer. The way her head’s turned, I can’t see her expression, but she’s no longer holding on to the seat belt. Instead, both hands are on the dashboard as she stares skyward.

“Oh…” she finally whispers.

I lean up against the steering wheel and crane my neck toward the sky. I don’t see a thing.

“What?” I ask. “What is it?”

Still staring upward, she says, “Are those the Black Hills?”

I take a second look for myself. In the distance, the walls of the cliff rise dramatically — at least four hundred feet straight toward the clouds. If it weren’t for the moonlight — where the outlined edges of the cliff are black against the dark gray sky — I wouldn’t even be able to see where they end.

I glance back at Viv, who’s still glued to the sky. The way her mouth hangs open and her eyebrows rise… At first, I thought it was fear. It’s not. It’s pure amazement.

“I take it they don’t have mountains like these where you’re from?” I ask.

She shakes her head, still dumbfounded. Her jaw is practically in her lap. Watching the sheer wonder in her reaction — there’s only one other person who looked at mountains like that. Matthew always said it — they were one of the only things that ever made him feel small.

“You okay there?” Viv asks.

Snapped back to reality, I’m surprised to find her staring straight at me. “O-Of course,” I say, turning back to the curving yellow lines at the center of the road.

She raises an eyebrow — too sharp to believe it. “You’re really not as great a liar as you think.”

“I’m fine,” I insist. “It’s just… being out here… Matthew would’ve liked it. He really… he would’ve liked it.”

Viv watches me carefully, measuring every syllable. I stay focused on the blur of yellow lines snaking along the road. I’ve been in this awkward silence before. It’s like the thirty-second period right after I brief the Senator on a tough issue. Perfect quiet. Where decisions get made.

“Y’know, I… uh… I saw his picture in his office,” she eventually says.

“What’re you talking about?”

“Matthew. I saw his photo.”

I stare at the road, picturing it myself. “The one with him and the blue lake?”

“Yeah… that’s the one,” she nods. “He looked… he looked nice.”

“He was.”

She eventually turns back toward the dark skyline. I stay with the swerving yellow lines. It’s no different from the conversation with her mom. This time, the silence is even longer than before.