Brad Meltzer - The Zero Game

Trish sat up straight and stared back at Dinah. For almost twenty seconds, the two women sat there, on opposite sides of the conference table, without saying a word. Next to them, Ezra and Georgia watched them like the spectators they usually were. Samurai standoff , Matthew used to call it. Happened every time they tried to close the bill. The final grab at the goody bag.

Dinah tapped the point of her pencil against the table, readying her sword. Even with Matthew gone, the battle had to go on. That is, until someone gave up.

“My mistake…” Trish finally offered. “I was reading it wrong… That project can wait till next year.”

Ezra smiled. Dinah barely grinned. She was never one to gloat. Especially with the Senate. As she well knew, if you gloated with the Senate, they’d always bite you back.

“Glad to hear it,” Dinah replied, zipping her fanny pack and standing up from the table.

Enjoying the victory, Ezra hummed Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah under his breath. Matthew used to do the same thing when his office mate would come in and throw around her weight. Someone’s in the kitchen I knoooow.. .

“So that’s it?” Georgia asked. “We’re finally finished?”

“Actually, Matthew said you should’ve been finished a week ago,” Dinah clarified. “Now we’re in a mad scramble with a vote at the end of the week.”

“The bill’s on the Floor at the end of the week?” Trish asked. “Since when?”

“Since this morning, when Leadership made the announcement without asking anyone.” All three of her colleagues shook their heads, but it really wasn’t much of a surprise. During election years, the biggest race in Congress was always the one to get home. That’s how campaigns were won. That and the individual projects Members brought home for their districts: a water project in Florida, a new sewer system in Massachusetts… and even that tiny gold mine in South Dakota, Dinah thought.

“You really think we can finish Conference in a week?” Trish called out.

“I don’t see why not,” Dinah replied, lugging the rest of the paperwork to the door that connected to her office. “All you have to do now is sell it to your boss.”

Trish nodded, watching Dinah leave. “By the way,” she called out, “thanks for taking over for Matthew. I know it’s been hard with everything that’s-”

“It had to get done,” Dinah interrupted. “It’s as simple as that.”

With a slam, the door shut behind her, and Dinah crossed back into her office. She was never one for the falsities of small talk, but more important, if she’d waited any longer, she might’ve missed the person who, as she looked across the room, was waiting so patiently for her.

“All set?” Barry asked, leaning against the short filing cabinet between Matthew’s and Dinah’s desks.

“All set,” Dinah replied. “Now where do you want to go to celebrate?”

“Yeah… absolutely… we’re from Wendell,” I say, nodding to the big guy in overalls standing outside our car window. “How’d you know?”

He motions to my button-down shirt. Under his overalls, he’s sporting a Spring Break ’94 T-shirt with neon orange letters. Doesn’t take a genius to know who’s the outsider.

“Shelley, right?” I ask, reading the name that’s written in black magic marker across the front of his banged-up construction helmet. “Janos told me to say hi.”

“Who’s Janos?” he asks, confused.

That tells me the first part. Whatever’s going on down there, these guys are just hired hands. “Sorry…” I say. “He’s another Wendell guy. I thought you two might’ve-”

“Shelley, you there?” a voice squawks through the two-way radio on his belt.

“’Scuse me,” he says, grabbing the radio. “Mileaway?” he asks.

“Where you at?” the voice shoots back.

“They got me up top the whole day,” Shelley says.

“Surface rat.”

“Mole.”

“Better than deep-level trash,” the voice shoots back.

“Amen to that,” Shelley says, shooting me a grin and inviting me in on the joke. I nod as if it’s the best mining barb I’ve heard all week, then quickly point to one of the few open parking spaces. “Listen, should we…?”

“Uh — ya… right there’s perfect,” Shelley says as the guy on his two-way continues talking. “There’s gear in the dry,” Shelley adds, motioning to the large brick building just behind the metal teepee. “And here…” He pulls a key ring of round metal tags from his pocket and undoes the latch, dropping four of the tags in my hand. Two are imprinted with the number 27; the other two have the number 15 . “Don’t forget to tag in,” he explains. “One in your pocket, one on the wall.”

With a quick thanks, we’re headed for our parking spot, and he’s back on his radio.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Viv asks. She’s sitting up slightly taller in the seat than yesterday, but there’s no mistaking the way she stares anxiously in her rearview mirror. When I was listening to Viv’s conversation with her mother, I said that strength had to be found from within. The way Viv continues to eye the rearview, she’s still searching for it.

“Viv, this place doesn’t have a single drop of gold in it, but they’re setting up shop like that scene from E.T . when the government shows up.”

“But if we…”

“Listen, I’m not saying I want to go down in the mine, but you have any better ideas for figuring out what’s going on around here?”

She looks down at her lap, which is covered with the brochures from the motel. On the front page, it reads, From the Bible to Plato’s Republic, the underground has been associated with Knowledge .

That’s what we’re counting on.

“All my friends’ dads used to mine,” I add. “Believe me, even if we do go in, it’s like a cave — we’re talking a few hundred feet down, max…”

“Try eight thousand,” she blurts.

“What?”

She freezes, surprised by the sudden attention. “Th-That’s what it says. In here…” she adds, passing me the brochure. “Before it was closed down, this place was the oldest operating mine in all of North America. It beat every gold, coal, silver, and other mine in the country.”

I snatch the brochure from her hands. Since 1876 , it says on the cover.

“They’ve been shoveling for over a hundred and twenty-five years. That’ll get you pretty deep,” she continues. “Those miners who were trapped in Pennsylvania a few years back — what were they at, two hundred feet?”

“Two hundred and forty,” I say.

“Well, this is eight thousand. Can you imagine? Eight thousand . That’s six Empire State Buildings straight into the ground…”

I flip the brochure to the back and confirm the facts: Six Empire State Buildings… fifty-seven levels… two and a half miles wide… and three hundred and fifty miles of underground passageways. At the very bottom, the temperature gets to 133 degrees. I glance out the window at the road beneath us. Forget the beehive. We’re standing on an entire ant farm.

“Maybe I should stay up here,” Viv says. “Y’know… sorta just to keep lookout…”

Before I can respond, she glances back to her rearview. Behind us, a silver Ford pickup pulls across the gravel, into the parking lot. Viv anxiously eyes the driver, checking to see if he looks familiar. I know what she’s thinking. Even if Janos is just touching down right now, he can’t be far behind. That’s the choice: the demon aboveground versus the demon below.

“You really think it’s safer to be up here by yourself?” I ask.