The Games (32 page)

They got to the car, and Silas flung the door open. “Get in.”

There were only two seats, but they all squeezed inside, feet and arms and legs. Jeff was sprawled mostly across the center console, legs stuffed into the passenger side. Eric sat on Vidonia’s lap.

Through the windshield, a shadow. A dark shape airborne, the flap of wings. The crowd screamed, and people ran. But some weren’t fast enough. A hundred yards up the street, the creature slammed to the pavement and knocked a woman to the ground. They could see it all through the windshield.

“Shut your eyes,” Silas told the boy.

A moment later, the creature ripped the woman in half.

Silas fumbled for his car keys.

He slid the key into the ignition. The gladiator moved up the street.

“Please, let’s go,” Vidonia said. “Now.”

The car roared to life, and Silas slammed it into reverse. He turned his head but couldn’t see anything.

“You’re clear!” Jeff shouted.

Silas stomped the gas, and the car lurched backward.

“Keep it straight,” Jeff said, looking behind them. “Just keep it straight.”

The gladiator receded in the distance. It leaped into the air, and Silas watched it rise in two, three powerful flaps of its wings. It flapped again and circled, coming to rest abruptly against the side of a building. It clung.

“It’s still learning to fly,” Vidonia said. “Building its strength.”

“Seems plenty strong to me,” Silas said.

“Get ready to cut your wheel,” Jeff snapped.

Silas’s eyes were still pinned on the gladiator in the distance. It pushed off the building with a mighty thrust and climbed upward into the sky.

“Now! Cut left now!”

Silas spun the wheel, and the car backed up around the corner. He put it into drive, hooked the wheel again, and took off down the side road leading away from the arena.

He drove twenty blocks.

Up ahead, he saw a hotel and pulled into the front drive.

“You’ll be safe here,” he said. “Inside.”

They all climbed out.

The boy hugged him.

“What the hell happened, Silas?” Jeff asked.

“I wish I knew.”

Jeff looked shell-shocked. “What’s going to happen now?”

“Now you’re going to get a room and stay inside until this is all over.”

Silas tossed him his phone as he climbed back behind the wheel. “And call my sister.”

I
T TOOK
nearly an hour to get to the highway. Time enough for him to clear his head and begin to think rationally. He saw fire trucks and ambulances.

Vidonia was pensive. She sat, reclined in her seat slightly, staring out the window. He supposed she was dealing with the shock of it. All those deaths. She turned away from the window, and her hand went to the radio. She scanned through the channels, lighting on bits of conversation or music, then moving on. She stopped.

“—eighteen confirmed dead, many more possible. The U.S. Olympic Commission has set up a crisis hotline to call if you have any questions about loved ones, or if you see anything suspicious. Once again, the gladiator has still not been captured. It remains at large. There have been several confirmed sightings within the city, and people are asked to remain indoors if at all possible.

“We have word from the Olympic Commission that Dr. Silas Williams, the head of the U.S. program, is wanted for questioning related to possible terrorist involvement in this incident. He is—”

Silas hit the radio button violently, swerving the car into another lane in the process. A horn blared.

He placed his hands carefully back on the wheel, but it was all he could do to stay between the dashed white lines. He was barely seeing the road now. It was Baskov’s face that blotted his mind’s eye.

He felt like he’d been sucker punched.

He hadn’t seen this coming. He’d expected committees and special investigators. He’d expected the blame game, red tape, and endless explanations, but he’d never expected this. Baskov was going for the throat. This was playing for keeps.

“Terrorist involvement?” Vidonia asked. “Are they fucking crazy?”

“Not crazy,” Silas answered. “Smart. And I’ve been stupid enough to walk right into it. I should have suspected something like this when
Baskov didn’t fire me. I thought he was afraid of public opinion, afraid the program would appear disorganized or chaotic if the top man was pushed out at the last minute. But that wasn’t it at all. He just needed me for insurance in case things went bad.”

“Things have definitely gone bad.”

“People have died, but that’s only part of what just happened. This is going to shut down the whole Games, at least temporarily. People are going to want answers. Whole fucking other countries are going to want answers.”

“But Baskov can’t do this. He can’t make you the fall guy.”

“I want answers, too.”

“But why you? Why terrorism?”

“Baskov isn’t going to take the heat for this. He knows what I would say about his decision to go on with the competition. This was a preemptive strike. Anything I say now is tainted. I’m the perfect scapegoat.”

“But he doesn’t have any evidence.”

“How much does he need?”

“We have to go back. We can talk to the news; we can get our side out there.”

Silas thought long and hard before responding. “What is our side of the story? Me, the reluctant scientist; him, the evil puppeteer. I don’t even know if I believe it. And what evidence do we have?”

“So what’s your plan, then? Running? Are you kidding?”

“We’re not running. I just need a little time.”

“We won’t last two days with the authorities looking for us.”

“I don’t need two days. I just need twelve hours. Then we’ll reevaluate our situation. If I’ve still got nothing, I’ll turn myself in then.”

“It will never stick, Silas. You’ve got no motive, no terrorist ties.”

“It may stick, or it may not. But that might not even be the goal. They begin with terrorism and work their way down to criminal negligence resulting in death. A conviction would put me in an out-of-the-way room for about eight years. And it wouldn’t be hard to make
people believe it, either. Citizens died, after all; it had to be somebody’s fault. Who better than the head of the program?”

“You’re being paranoid. It can’t happen like that.”

“Maybe.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Silas.”

“I may not have designed it, but that gladiator wouldn’t have existed if not for me. I’m no innocent bystander. That makes it at least partially my responsibility.”

Silas hit the radio button and almost swerved into another lane again when Baskov’s gravelly voice came through the speakers: “—tunate tragedy that has occurred. My sincerest regrets go out to the families who have lost loved ones this evening. I can assure you that we are doing all that we can to see to it that this situation is brought under control without further loss of life. And I want to also say that we are doing everything within our power to see that the person or persons responsible for this are brought to justice. We are right now searching for the head of U.S. biodevelopment, Dr. Silas Williams, and we hope to know more when he has been found. Anyone with information about his current whereabouts, please call the hotline. Thank you.”

A phone number was read. There was a pause, then a new voice: “That was Commissioner Stephen Baskov, recorded minutes ago at a press conference outside—”

Silas clicked the radio off.

“It can’t be this easy for them,” Vidonia said.

“There’s nothing we can do about it right now. They may not be holding all the cards, but they’re sure as hell making up the rules as they go along. We have to move fast. We’re going to start losing options here pretty quickly.”

Silas jerked the wheel to the right, cutting across the heavy traffic. Horns blared. He’d almost seen the sign too late. Riding the brake hard as he descended the off-ramp, he managed a skidding stop at the T. Traffic poured by in front of him. A quick glance at the bank of road signs and he turned right, following the arrow shaped like an airplane.

“Where are we going?”

“Where the answers are. We’re just taking the long way.”

T
HE AIRPORT
was enormous in both its sheer physical size and in the volume of humanity that coursed along its many arteries, internal and external. Its roads were clogged with taxis, trams, buses, and cars. The sky above was thick with circling flashing lights. All told, hundreds of thousands of people revolved around it like an extended solar system. It was a good place in which to get lost.

“If you’re thinking of getting on a plane, then you
have
lost your mind. They check ID, or have you forgotten?”

“I know,” Silas said. “We’re here to get some new wheels. They’ll be looking for this one.”

Vidonia laughed. “What do you want to do, steal a car?”

“I wouldn’t know how. We’re going to do the next best thing, rent one.”

Silas explained to her what to do, and when he finally pulled his car into the drop-off lane, he asked, “Do you have a credit card?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going to need to use it. My card is probably already flagged.”

“You think mine isn’t?”

“Probably not yet. They’ll eventually catch on, but at least this way, the transaction won’t jump out at them. It might give us a little more time. We don’t need much.”

She nodded. “What kind of car?”

“Something small and inconspicuous.”

“The opposite of you, you mean.”

“Something like that.”

The door clicked closed. He watched her disappear into the crowd.

Ten minutes passed.

Even through the closed window, the rattle of chaos around him agitated his nerves, the sounds of people and cars and planes and slamming doors all dissolving into a single edgeless din that the human ear
couldn’t separate. Everywhere he looked, there was movement. He searched the throng for Vidonia’s face, trying to stay levelheaded. These things take time. There were lines to stand in, and papers to sign. Ten minutes was nothing. It could take her that long just to find the right person to talk to.

Twenty minutes more passed. But the crowd hadn’t changed one bit. It was still coming and going, a roiling mass—carrying suitcases, and purses, and babies, and accents. A hundred different types of people. The cars looked the same, though, midsize sedans, mostly. Hybrid electrics, mostly. Inconspicuous, mostly.

He imagined how his sports car must stick out among all its peers that sat idling along the broad drop-off walkway.

Ten minutes more passed, but he didn’t start to really worry until the police car pulled up behind him. No, he didn’t start to worry until then.

The cop didn’t get out right away. He just sat there behind the shine of windshield.
Checking the plate? Picking his nose? Waiting for his mother to come walking through the doors after a long flight from Des Moines? The spinning lights aren’t on
, he reassured himself. But then the cop opened the door and stepped out, erasing all likelihood that he was waiting for his mother. He was wearing his blue leathers; the guy was on duty.

He walked toward Silas’s car. It was only ten steps, but Silas had time to run ten different scenarios through his head. He should run. He should fight. He should play dumb. Maybe the guy just wanted him to move his car. He’d been parked in the same spot for a while now.

Silas heard the click of the cop’s boots, a sound peeling away like a paint chip from the massive generalized noise of his surroundings, becoming specific. A bus rumbled past. Bored faces in the windows.

Two gloved knuckles rapped on his window. Silas rolled the window down.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been parked here for too long.” In Silas’s experience, by mid-career, cops came in two varieties, hard and soft. This one was
big, youngish, already tending toward the doughy stereotype. Eyes like dark circles in a pale, puffy face. “This is for drop-off only.”

“Sorry, officer, I’m waiting on my wife. In and out, she told me. The agency screwed up our return tickets, and she’s getting it straightened out before we leave. But I’ll keep circling.” Silas put a hand on his gearshift, but the cop’s voice stopped him.

“I’ve seen your face somewhere.”

Silas didn’t say anything. The cop bent, looking hard in his face, then up and down at the car.

“Yeah,” the cop said. “TV, I think.”

Silas could see the wheels turning just beneath the man’s dark eyes.

“Did you used to play for the Heat?”

Silas didn’t even hesitate. “No, the Wizards. Can hardly call it playing, though. I rode the bench, mostly, but it’s nice to know there’s a few people who still recognize me.”

“I never really followed the Wizards.”

“Well, must have been an away game you saw.”

“Yeah, that must be it. What position?”

“Power forward, mostly, but like I said, I was a bench jockey.”

“Been retired long?”

“A good ten years.”

“Funny, I could have sworn I saw you recently. Like just a few weeks ago.”

Those wheels were turning faster now.

“What’s your name?”

“Jay Brown. Want an autograph?”

“Naw, that’s okay.” He straightened up. “You can stay here a few more minutes, but after that, move it along. I don’t care if your wife’s here or not. A lot of people could use this space.”

“Yes, officer.”

The cop gave him a long parting look before he turned.

He’s not sure if he believes me
.

The gritty sounds of his footfalls faded into the background noise again.

He’ll check my plate when he’s back in his car. No doubt about it
.

Then the passenger door of Silas’s car burst open, and Vidonia sank into the seat.

Silas had the car in drive almost before the door was closed. He groped his way into deep traffic, thankful for it for the first time in his life.

“What was that about?” Vidonia asked.

“About ten years off my life, I’d say.”

“I saw him standing there, so I waited.”

“Did you get it?”

“Yeah.”

“What took so long?”