Carbines and Capacitors 9/14
Previous
A/N: Some of the conversation in this chapter and the next two was inspired by Michaelssw0rd’s banner for the POI Big Bang. Also, I’m having to guesstimate dates for “The Perfect Mark” based on the dates given for “Mors Praematura” (October 9-12) and “Endgame”/“The Crossing” (November 10-13); there are no holiday references in “The Perfect Mark” that would help me pin it down relative to Halloween, but there’s a moment in the next chapter that works a little better if it’s set before Daylight Savings ends on November 3.
Chapter 9
Breakthrough
“So, like, I don’t actually know in what order the tasing and the drugging happened,” Sam said the next morning over breakfast Cheyenne and Mr. Finch had brought from the Lyric Diner. “I just know I woke up, and she was there, and I couldn’t get up to take her down before she tased me. Then the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the front seat of her car, zip-tied to the steering wheel.”
“Did she say anything, like why she grabbed you?” Reese asked, helping himself to another Belgian waffle.
Sam shook her head. “Just cryptic stuff about the Machine giving her a mission that doesn’t fit with the relevant-irrelevant split. In fact, most of what she said the last three days was cryptic because apparently the Machine only tells her what to do right before she’s supposed to do it. What she said last night about Decima? I actually believed her when she said that was the first time she’d heard any of it.” She stuffed an entire strip of bacon into her mouth.
Mr. Finch pulled a wry face and passed Reese his plate for more eggs Benedict. “I suppose we have Collier to thank for the Machine’s decision to give us a straight answer about the bigger picture.”
“So why’d you guys steal the medical supply van?” asked Reese.
“Mm!” Sam answered, held up a finger, and swallowed. “Oxygen tank. I used that with spaghetti to make a thermal lance.”
“What for?”
“There’s a maintenance tunnel or something that runs under Cooper Square, but the entrance was blocked with a grate. Root had me cut a hole in it to serve as an escape hatch for Greenfield.” Sam swiped a bite of Cheyenne’s steak and eggs with her knife. “Then we went to a CIA drop site so Root could be ‘captured’ yesterday and get us both in the truck with Greenfield.” She popped the bite in her mouth.
Cheyenne moved his plate and glared at her to stop her from stealing another. “If you wanted steak and eggs, you shoulda said so when we called.”
Unrepentant, Sam went back to eating all the bacon. Reese moved that container and put a second bacon-cheese omelet on her plate. She made a very unladylike gesture but doused the omelet in Tabasco sauce and tucked into it like she hadn’t already had one.
Mr. Finch shook his head, but not at their antics. “I still don’t understand why the Machine would send two teams into the same battle with different assignments. Why keep us in the dark about the Greenfield mission? What is this new third category into which Greenfield apparently falls?”
“Last night, it referred to Root as its analog interface,” Cheyenne noted. “What does that mean?”
“I can answer only in the most general terms,” said Mr. Finch. “Computer code, in its most basic form, is expressed as binary numbers, strings of ones and zeroes. Because those are digits, computers are considered digital machines, and by extension anything computerized or anything that exists solely on a computer or that can be accessed only by computer is called ‘digital.’ The rest of the world is called ‘analog.’ And an interface is a point where two systems connect and interact.”
Cheyenne nodded slowly. “So… the Machine is digital. To interact with the analog side of the world, it needs an interface.”
Mr. Finch looked relieved that he’d understood. “Yes, exactly.”
“But why Root?”
“That’s the $64,000 question,” said Reese.
Sam made a disgusted noise. “I swear, she talks to that thing like it’s her girlfriend.”
“Jealous?” Reese teased and ate a piece of bacon.
“What? No. Are you kidding?”
Cheyenne decided not even to try to work out what they were talking about. His not-so-old discomfort with the idea of artificial intelligence was coming back with a vengeance, not helped at all by the notion that the Machine had apologized to him or by the idea that it was aware enough of its own limitations and its difference from humans to have chosen a go-between-not that he thought much of its selection of Root when, by Reese’s own admission, she wasn’t the only person it had ever spoken to that way, even before Cheyenne had come along.
And speaking of coming back with a vengeance, Sam made another stab at Cheyenne’s steak. Unfortunately for her, his arms were long enough to move his plate two seats away and back before she could run past him. She squeaked indignantly, which caught Bear’s attention, and when Cheyenne continued to block her, she smacked his shoulder-not hard, but hard enough to feel.
“Get your own!” he insisted.
“I thought you claimed me as your sister!” she shot back.
“That don’t entitle you to my steak!”
Bear barked, and Mr. Finch looked like he was getting a headache.
“Now, children,” Reese chided, not quite able to keep from smiling.
“If you’re not going to finish your omelet, Miss Shaw…” Mr. Finch began.
Sam hit Cheyenne again, went back to her seat, and wolfed down the rest of her omelet in record time.
Mr. Finch turned to Reese. “By the way, Mr. Reese, Sloan’s asked us to meet him at Greenfield’s apartment this afternoon for a final farewell.”
Reese nodded. “Sounds good.”
Cheyenne put the last bite of his steak in his mouth a split second before Sam’s knife hit his empty plate. She huffed and tried to swipe another piece of bacon, only for Reese to catch her wrist.
“You’ll give yourself indigestion eating that fast, Shaw,” he said seriously.
Sam rolled her eyes and pulled back. “Okay, fine. Can I go home now?”
“Is Collier stable?” Mr. Finch asked.
“Yeah, his blood pressure’s stabilized. I’ll pick up a phone on my way home and text you the number, but don’t call unless it’s an emergency-like, ‘need a surgeon stat’ kind of emergency. I haven’t showered or slept in three days, so y’know. I’d like to do both.”
“We understand,” Mr. Finch said for all the men. “Thank you, and-it’s good to have you back, Miss Shaw.”
“Yeah, whatever.” But Sam made sure to give Bear some farewell scratches on her way out the door.
Cheyenne shook his head as the door closed behind Sam. “I don’t think I ever will get used to her.”
Reese smiled. “She wouldn’t pick on you like that if she didn’t like you. She likes you even more because you fight back.”
Mr. Finch sighed. “Well, if you’ve finished your meal, Mr. Bodie, would you mind seeing if our guest is ready for his?”
“Yes, sir,” Cheyenne agreed with a nod and took his plate to the kitchen. Since Collier couldn’t walk without assistance yet, Mr. Finch had assigned Cheyenne to the safe house for the day in case Collier needed anything-and in case the microchip had contained a GPS transponder that Decima might have tracked already.
Cheyenne paused in the hall on his way and used the reflection in the glass of a picture to look into the bedroom so as not to disturb Collier if he was still asleep. Collier was awake and looking out the window, however, so after Cheyenne put his own plate in the sink, he found a bed tray and loaded it with Collier’s covered plate, which had been keeping warm on the back burner, and a napkin and a cup of coffee. Then he turned off the burner and carried the tray into the bedroom.
“Mornin’,” he said as he walked in. “Hope we didn’t wake you.”
“No more than that did,” Collier replied, gesturing toward the monitor stand with his left thumb. “What was all that about, though?”
“Ah, little sisters.”
Collier laughed.
Cheyenne set the tray over Collier’s lap and took the cover off the plate to reveal the sandwich he’d ordered, since Collier had been asleep when Mr. Finch had called and neither Mr. Finch nor Sam had been sure what Collier would want for breakfast. “It’s a grilled cheese sandwich with extra bacon and tomato,” he announced, unwrapping it for Collier. “I’ve had these a few times; they’re pretty tasty, even with what passes for a tomato this late in the year. An’ I’ve had my arm in a sling often enough to know how tough it is to try to eat with your left hand when you’re not used to it.”
Collier eyed the sandwich skeptically. “Thanks… I guess.” The diner had cut the sandwich on the diagonal, so he picked up one half and took a tentative bite-and his eyes lit up in pleased surprise. “Mm!” He nodded at Cheyenne and flashed a thumbs-up with his right hand.
Cheyenne grinned. “Well, I’ll let you get on with it.” And he turned to go.
“Mm,” said Collier, shaking his head when Cheyenne looked at him again, and swallowed his bite of sandwich. “No, please stay. I’d like to talk to you.”
Cheyenne paused. “All right. Do you mind if I get myself some more coffee first?”
“No, not at all. While you’re at it, could you bring me some creamer for mine?”
“I think what we’ve got is half-and-half. Is that all right?”
Collier shrugged. “Sure.”
Cheyenne nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
Reese was in the kitchen, washing the breakfast dishes, when Cheyenne walked in. “Finch already left,” Reese reported quietly. “He has to put in an appearance at Universal Heritage Insurance this week, so it might as well be today.”
Cheyenne smiled in amusement. Having needed only two cover identities so far, neither of which held office jobs, he hadn’t had to do the sort of two-step that Mr. Finch and Reese did to keep up appearances. He’d often wondered how they managed it when they had a case; now he knew.
“How’s Collier?” Reese continued.
“Awake and eatin’,” Cheyenne answered, finding a clean mug and pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Says he wants to talk to me.”
Reese’s eyebrows shot up, but then he nodded thoughtfully. “Hope that’s a good sign.”
“Me, too.”
“By the way, about Finch… I saw the look you gave him when Root mentioned the ferry bombing.”
“And?” Cheyenne asked, hoping Collier hadn’t also noticed.
Reese lowered his voice further. “You’re half right. They were after Nathan Ingram, Finch’s business partner and his best friend since they went to MIT together. Nobody else involved with Northern Lights knew Finch even existed until last year. They did kill Ingram. But Finch was there, too, and that was when he was injured.”
Cheyenne nodded slowly.
“I don’t think Shaw knows,” Reese added. “Finch didn’t tell me until we got back from Oregon in May, and that was after we’d been working together for two years. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
Cheyenne nodded again. “I understand. I’ll keep it under my hat.”
Reese smiled. “Thanks.”
On that note, Cheyenne collected a spoon and the half-and-half and went back to the bedroom. Collier had already finished one half of his sandwich and was working on the other when Cheyenne came in, so Cheyenne poured cream into Collier’s coffee until he said when, stirred it for him, and took cream and spoon back to the kitchen before returning with his own coffee.
“All right,” Cheyenne said, pulling a chair up to the bed. “What’d you want to talk about?”
“Not that it’s any of my business, really,” Collier began carefully, “but… where’d you hear what Crazy Horse and Dull Knife said before the Little Bighorn?”
Cheyenne decided to go for a more plausible explanation than I was there. “I was raised on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.”
Collier blinked in surprise. “Really?!”
Cheyenne nodded. “I was adopted as a baby by a Cheyenne family. Grew up hearin’ all the old stories.”
“Huh, wow. Sorry, I’m just… surprised an adoption agency would allow that.”
“Well, I don’t know all the whys an’ wherefores. All my father told me is that my folks were killed in a wreck an’ they couldn’t find any o’ my kin to come claim me.”
Collier nodded thoughtfully. “But you said you had a foster family.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Cheyenne took a drink of coffee while he considered how to explain that. “See, my father got into a blood feud with one o’ the local ranchers. Long story short, when I was twelve, I went to live with a white family on another ranch. Stayed with them about three years, until Mr. Pierce was killed, an’ then I went back to the reservation until I was eighteen.” Pierce was a common enough name that Cheyenne reckoned it was safe to mention.
Collier nodded again. “And then what, Army?”
“Among other things.” Cheyenne punctuated that with a drink of coffee and hoped that would be a clear enough signal that he wouldn’t share more.
Collier washed down the last bite of his sandwich with a drink of his own coffee. “I just wondered,” he said when he’d swallowed. “You seem to know a lot about things I’ve never read in any history book.”
Cheyenne shrugged. “History books can only tell you so much.”
“You mean history’s written by the winners.”
“Well, not only that. Every historian’s got his own views of the past, and even when he’s tryin’ to be fair, he’s still got to pick an’ choose how to make the facts fit together in a story folks can read without gettin’ lost. You take the Little Bighorn, for example. Most books’ll give you a map with neat little markers and arrows an’ labels that tell you ‘Benteen was here,’ ‘Reno was there,’ ‘Custer was over yonder,’ an’ so on. Battles are never that neat in real life; they’re chaos. Even when there’s a good, clear plan based on good information about the terrain an’ the enemy’s strength, it never goes exactly like you figured. It’s worse when your information’s wrong or your scouts lied to you. The books can’t tell what it was like to be there on the ground, either-what Benteen saw, what Reno heard, the smell o’ the dust an’ gunpowder an’ horse an’ blood, the awful hate that went through the Cheyenne when Custer had the band play ‘Garryowen,’ the shouts o’ the warriors an’ the screams o’ the dyin’. You’ll never find those in any book, not even if a historian had dared to ask. There aren’t words for ’em.”
There weren’t words for the nightmares, either-Cheyenne had woken up screaming again several times before Mr. Finch had called that morning-but admitting that would be tantamount to admitting he’d been there as Touch the Sky. He may have come too close to doing so already. Besides, he’d said more about the Little Bighorn in the past twelve hours than he had since Reno’s hearing. He really hoped Collier wouldn’t ask for further details.
“I dunno,” said Collier. “That was pretty evocative, what you just said.”
Cheyenne shook his head. “Doesn’t even scratch the surface. It’s like tryin’ to explain what it’s like the first time you fall in love, or the first time you lose someone, or the first time you kill a man.”
Collier suddenly found his coffee very interesting. Cheyenne waited, though, and eventually Collier sighed. “The men I’ve killed deserved to die,” he said quietly, not looking up.
“Really? You were all set to kill Sloan. What’d he ever do to you?”
“He was getting too close.”
“So it’s all right to kill to protect secrets as long as they’re your own?”
Collier looked up at that, annoyed. “Why are you defending the government?”
Cheyenne shrugged. “I’m not. I ain’t too happy about the spyin’ myself, and what happened to your brother was wrong.”
“Then you understand why I have to get justice.”
“I understand, all right, but you’re not talkin’ about justice. You’re talkin’ vengeance.”
Collier looked away with a huff. “What’s the difference?”
“Justice can be satisfied.”
Collier looked at him again with a confused frown.
“Justice has limits,” Cheyenne explained. “Justice draws a clear line, says ‘This far, no further,’ and won’t cross that line no matter what. Justice can be tempered with mercy and compassion. There’s no room for those in revenge. Even if revenge draws the line an’ doesn’t cross it, it always feels hollow. But too often revenge blurs the line or won’t draw it at all. Then you can’t stop killin’ until there’s nobody left-only the empty place you couldn’t fill, ’cause all that blood won’t bring back the one you lost.”
“Set out to correct the world’s wrongs,” Reese added softly from the doorway, “and you’ll almost certainly end up adding to them.”
Collier looked down at his coffee again.
Cheyenne watched in silence for a moment until an old memory suddenly came back to him. “You know, I met a priest once,” he began, “down near the border in a town called Security. The local landowner ran that place like his own private kingdom, paid the people who lived there in food an’ shelter so they couldn’t afford to leave.”
Collier huffed and looked up. “Sounds like slavery.”
“Well, it was in all but name.” Most of the people who’d lived there, in fact, had been Southerners who’d lost everything either during the war or in the first year of Reconstruction, and it had been the height of irony for them to have fallen into Manuel Loza’s trap-but Cheyenne hadn’t dared to say so even in 1866, let alone now. Besides, trading freedom for security was never a good bargain, no matter how one looked at it. “Anyway,” he continued, “I got to talkin’ with Father Mendez, and he said somethin’ I’ll never forget.”
“Which was?”
“He said when men decide to play God, they find out pretty quick the only one o’ His powers they have is the power of destruction.”*
Collier sighed heavily. “Sometimes things have to be destroyed so they can be rebuilt.”
“Rebuilt into what, though? Seems to me your Vigilance pals haven’t thought that through.”
Collier shook his head stubbornly. “The people we target deserve to die.”
“‘Many that live deserve death,’” Reese countered-and for once, Cheyenne recognized the quotation. He hadn’t gotten far in reading The Lord of the Rings, but he did remember this part and nodded as Reese continued, “‘And some who die deserve life,’ like your brother. ‘Can you give it to them?’”
Collier closed his eyes in pain that obviously wasn’t physical.
“Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement,” Cheyenne recited further. “For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Collier shook his head again and opened his eyes. “I have to make them pay for what they did to Jesse.”
“And you think the people who microchipped you like a stray dog are your best bet?” Reese challenged.
Collier flinched-but then huffed with a smile. “You guys keep giving me things to think hard about.”
“Good,” said Reese as Cheyenne stood. “Here’s one more: if we didn’t believe you could be reasoned with, we wouldn’t have saved your life.”
Collier saluted with his coffee cup and a rueful smile, drained the cup, and put it back on the tray before Cheyenne picked it up and left the room with Reese.
“Think he will?” Cheyenne asked quietly as Reese started washing Collier’s dishes.
“Will what?” Reese returned.
“Change his mind, maybe work with us.”
Reese shook his head a little. “Hard to say. He’ll think about it, at least, but… you can’t reason someone out of a position he wasn’t reasoned into.”
Cheyenne conceded the point with a tilt of his head and picked up a towel to dry.
After that, life fell back into an easier pattern for the next two weeks, with Mr. Finch watching over Root at the library and Sam, Reese, and Cheyenne taking turns assisting Collier at the safe house. Sam wanted Collier walking at least as far as the privy by the end of the first day, but until he could get the hang of balancing all his weight on his good leg and one crutch, he did need help. The fact that Reese and Cheyenne were willing to give that help without comment seemed to give Collier yet more to chew on, although he kept his conversations with them on lighter subjects than before. For her part, Miss Carter reported that Laskey had found HR stockpiling millions of dollars, but neither of them had learned why or come up with a new way to send word to Yogorov that Simmons was targeting Russian businesses for harsher protection measures.
No sooner had Sam and Cheyenne agreed that Collier was able to fend for himself everywhere except in the kitchen, though, than Mr. Finch needed Sam and Reese to help him with the case of a snake-oil salesman posing as a “hypnotherapist” (whatever that meant). Hayden Price was swindling virtually everyone in his life except his girlfriend, which meant-if the Mavericks’ record with Samantha Crawford and Modesty Blaine were anything to go by-that his girlfriend was bound to be swindling him somehow. So Cheyenne was just as happy to look after Collier while Sam and Reese looked after Price… at least until the third day of the case, when Reese, following Price, and Miss Carter, following Laskey, met up outside an auction house frequented by one of Price’s victims and discovered they were on the same trail.
“They call him ‘the Swede,’” Miss Carter explained when she called Cheyenne that evening. “His real name’s Sven Vanger, and he’s an antique dealer-who’s apparently laundering money for HR. Simmons and Terney told Laskey to kill Vanger after he does one last job for them tomorrow.”
Cheyenne frowned. “You think Price might be after HR’s money?”
“That’s what it looks like, but we don’t know how yet.” She sighed. “Can you leave Collier for a few hours tomorrow morning?”
“If not, Mr. Finch can probably sit with him. Why?”
“I’m meeting a contact to find out more about the money laundering… but my contact never gives information for nothing, and this time his price is that he wants to meet you.”
He had a sneaking suspicion about the identity of this contact and wasn’t sure he wanted to meet the fellow-but neither did he want her going to the meeting alone. “I’ll tell Mr. Finch you need backup.”
“Thanks, Cheyenne,” she said with an audible smile and told him where and when to meet her. “Be sure to wait behind the building,” she cautioned. “I’ll have Laskey with me.”
“Got it.”
“If you get there early and someone challenges you, tell ’em you’re supposed to meet me there. If they don’t recognize the name Jim Merritt, they’ll recognize mine.”
“Fine.” Then something prompted him to ask, “Is everything all right, Miss Carter?”
She sighed again. “I’m just… I’m tired, you know? I’m ready for all this to be over. Quinn called me to meet him for coffee this morning, and… it was all I could do not to let on that I know.”
Truth be told, he was tired of it all, too, and he wanted to go home. Kind as his new friends were, he’d give anything to see Tom Brewster, Bronco Layne, and his other old friends again. Besides, if anyone could talk sense into Collier, it would be quick-witted, tenderhearted Tom.
But all Cheyenne said aloud was, “Maybe we’ll have somethin’ to go on this time tomorrow.”
“I sure hope so,” said Miss Carter.
After they said their good nights, Cheyenne called Mr. Finch, who was glad to have a reason to avoid Price for the morning. “HR sent a hit team to shoot up his office,” Mr. Finch reported, “but even that has not convinced him to level with us completely. At least Collier has done us that courtesy.”
“Where’s Price now?” Cheyenne asked.
“At one of our other safe houses. I wouldn’t have wanted him to know about that one, even without Collier there. But he’ll be safe enough with Mr. Reese and Miss Shaw guarding him.”
So everything was arranged, and the next morning, Cheyenne rose early, consulted his maps one last time, and ventured out to brave the subways and buses to reach the meeting site. He arrived about half an hour early, but before he could find a place to wait for Miss Carter out of sight, two thugs met him on the sidewalk.
“Who are you?” asked one of them.
“Jim Merritt,” Cheyenne replied. “I’m supposed to meet Joss Carter here, but I’m early.”
The thugs looked at each other and exchanged nods. “Text her,” said the second thug, who had a long scar below the corner of his right eye. “Tell her we’re takin’ you in to see the boss.”
“Mind if I call instead? I can’t get the hang o’ the keyboard on this thing,” Cheyenne admitted, brandishing his pocket telephone. The concept of the text message wasn’t too different from that of the telegram, but he had enough trouble trying to type on a typewriter or computer, let alone something as fiddly and sensitive as a touchscreen. Reese, Fusco, and Miss Carter had all assured him that it was a common problem.
“Put it on speaker,” the second thug ordered.
Cheyenne dialed first and then turned on the speakerphone.
“Talk fast,” Miss Carter answered, and the thugs seemed to recognize her voice.
“It’s me,” Cheyenne replied. “I’m here early. They’re takin’ me inside.”
“All right.” She didn’t sound pleased, but whether she knew the telephone was in speaker mode or not, they both knew it wouldn’t be wise for him to refuse. “I’ll see you soon.” And she hung up.
Apparently satisfied, the thugs ushered Cheyenne in the building’s front door and down a dimly-lit staircase to an equally dimly-lit basement. The brightest light, almost like a spotlight, shone over a long table in the center of the room, at the head of which sat a balding, bespectacled man who looked up at Cheyenne with a bland, pleasant smile and didn’t look at all like the most dangerous man in New York.
“Welcome, Mr. Merritt,” said he. “I was hoping you’d be early and we’d have a chance to talk before Det. Carter arrives. I’m Carl Elias.”
“Elias,” Cheyenne returned with a nod. “Seems I’ve heard of you.”
“You know, it’s funny, but I hadn’t heard of you until this summer. I suspect our friends Harold and John had something to do with that.”
Cheyenne carefully said nothing.
Elias’ smile broadened in amusement. “You’re a cautious man. I like that. Please,” he said, gesturing to a seat, and the scar-faced thug pulled it out to let Cheyenne sit down. “Will you join me in a glass of wine? Brunello Di Montalcino-the finish is quite exquisite.”
“I’d just as soon have coffee, if it’s all the same to you.” Cheyenne never had liked the taste of wine; he’d drink whiskey or beer on occasion, but not often and never much. It didn’t seem wise to refuse Elias’ hospitality altogether, though.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Elias. “From what I’ve read, you are a… recovering alcoholic.”
“Yes, sir,” Cheyenne lied. Living with Charley Dolan, the drunk who’d taken him in the second time he’d left the People and who’d fought to get and stay sober for Cheyenne’s sake, had put Cheyenne off the idea of drinking to excess long ago. But the real Merritt had been a drunk, and that was part of the cover identity they’d established in this year as well.
Elias nodded. “How do you take your coffee?”
“Black, please.”
Elias looked up at Scarface, who nodded and left. “So I hear you’re working with Det. Carter on this HR case,” Elias told Cheyenne then.
Cheyenne nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“How’s that going?”
“Slowly.”
Elias nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I offered more than once to take care of HR for her, permanently. She turned me down every time.”
“HR’s like a rattlesnake. Only sure way to kill it is to cut off its head. From what I heard, you didn’t know who the head was.”
“Do you?”
Cheyenne didn’t answer. Elias watched him for a moment, until Scarface returned with the coffee. Cheyenne nodded his thanks and drank cautiously; the coffee tasted good and didn’t seem to be drugged or poisoned, so he drank more deeply.
“Do you play chess, Mr. Merritt?” Elias asked then.
Cheyenne shrugged. “Sometimes.” He knew Elias wasn’t a man to be hustled, but he wasn’t going to admit to his actual skill level, either-not that he’d actively studied the game by reading books on the subject, but he had had plenty of practice.
Scarface brought over a chess set as Elias said, “I haven’t had a good game since the last time I saw Harold back in April. Frankly, I’m surprised Det. Carter has managed to avoid telling them about me this long. I can only assume she’s embarrassed to admit to our deal.”
Cheyenne frowned. “Deal?”
Elias raised his eyebrows and began setting up the black chessmen at his end of the board. “Didn’t she tell you? She saved my life. Then we agreed she’d let me go as long as Anthony”-here he gestured to Scarface-“and I keep a low profile. Hence my new… palatial surroundings.”
“Pretty ironic, considering,” said Scar-er, Anthony.
“Considerin’ what?” Cheyenne asked, setting up the white chessmen.
Elias placed his last piece and looked up. “Once upon a time, I tried to kill her.”
Cheyenne looked up at him sharply.
“I kidnapped her son, too. John rescued him. If I’d known then what I know now….” Elias shook his head. “Then again, maybe it’s all for the best. Going to prison was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and John actually needed me there about this time last year.”
Cheyenne didn’t know what it said about Elias’ life that prison was one of the best parts of it, but he didn’t comment. He simply finished setting up, took another drink of coffee, and made his first move. Elias answered with a move Cheyenne hadn’t seen in a while, so it took him a moment to remember the best strategy to counter with.** When he did make his second move, Elias hummed thoughtfully and took time to consider his own strategy. Unsurprisingly, Elias was an aggressive player, but so was Cheyenne, and each side was soon down several major pieces.
“Very interesting, Mr. Merritt,” Elias said as they chased each other around the board. “You play exactly like I’d expect someone from the nineteenth century to play… someone like your character from that play that failed-what was his name, Cheyenne Bodie?”
“Guess you could say I’m a method actor,” Cheyenne replied and captured another piece.
Elias chuckled and knocked over his king, conceding the game. “You’ve got me in three moves. Care for another?”
Cheyenne checked his watch and found they still had some time before Miss Carter was due to arrive. “Why not?”
They reset the board and began again. But this time, it quickly became apparent that Elias was playing not as himself but as Quinn, casting Cheyenne in the role of Mr. Finch and his team. Cheyenne didn’t say anything, but after he’d captured several pawns, he put one of them back on his own front rank, representing Laskey.
Elias looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “Is that so?”
“Your move,” said Cheyenne.
“Well, the most obvious move is….” Elias moved a bishop to threaten the Laskey pawn; Cheyenne suspected that was supposed to be Terney, but he wasn’t sure. It would make sense if Quinn were the black king and Simmons the black queen, but Cheyenne didn’t know if Terney had equals at his level of HR. “But of course that pawn is protected by this rook,” Elias continued, shifting one of Cheyenne’s rooks, clearly representing Miss Carter, to cover that square and threaten the black king at the same time. “If things remain as they are, the bishop takes the pawn and the rook takes the bishop. Question is whether white thinks that’s an acceptable exchange of material.”
Cheyenne considered the board. “Now supposin’….” He moved a knight, standing for himself, into a position that covered the pawn and threatened the bishop. “Does that take this bishop off the board, or can I have three bishops?”
“Hm. That depends. I happen to know this bishop has a family-I heard him beg for his life once. With the threat from both the rook and the knight… you might have three bishops, at least for a move or two. I’d take him off the board after that, though how you’d do that is probably different from the way I would.” Elias looked up at Cheyenne again. “Of course, you realize we really ought to be doing this with more players.”
“At least four?” Cheyenne asked knowingly.
Elias smiled. “Well, red and black are pretty tough to distinguish right now, and green’s mostly sitting it out on the sideline.”
“White’s been lookin’ for a way to turn red an’ black against each other.” Cheyenne pointed to the Terney bishop. “Would this be the piece to use?”
Elias leaned back and considered. “Better than the pawn,” he finally stated, “but not in isolation. You’d need some other pressure on both red and black, and that might be a reason for green to enter the game.”
Cheyenne was still pondering that when Miss Carter arrived to ask Elias about Vanger and the money laundering. Elias succeeded in pressuring her into tasting the wine-to her credit, she did no more than taste, although she seemed to agree with him that it was good-and explained that the laundered money was a kickback from the Bratva to HR in exchange for ignoring Yogorov’s escape from prison. The money would be delivered to Vanger, who’d deposit it in his own accounts before receiving separate instructions as to which lot to buy at the auction house that day. The purchased item, sold by someone working for HR, would be an overpriced fake.
“So if your con man thinks he can just swoop in and take a piece of HR’s business,” Elias concluded, “he’d better watch his back.”
“In more ways than one,” Cheyenne murmured as Elias took a drink of wine.
Miss Carter frowned. “How do you mean?”
“His girl.” Cheyenne shook his head. “It’s just a hunch, but… I know a woman who swindled a professional gambler out of $16,000 by insistin’ they play five-card stud accordin’ to Hoyle an’ then pullin’ some rule out o’ Hoyle’s book that none o’ the other players had ever heard of that meant his winnin’ hand wasn’t allowed.*** Won’t surprise me if Price gets bit the same way.”
“Cherchez la femme,” Elias agreed. “‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male’-and in this case, that could be literal, unless our friends intervene.”
“Well, we’ll pass that along,” said Miss Carter, nodding to Cheyenne, and they stood at the same time. “Thanks for your time,” she told Elias.
“My pleasure,” Elias returned with a smile. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Merritt.”
Cheyenne nodded, and as Miss Carter turned to leave, he started to follow.
He was almost to the door when Elias called after him, “Oh, by the way, Mr. Merritt….”
Cheyenne paused and looked back.
“Keep an eye on that rook, will you? I don’t want anyone else making the same mistake I made.”
“Neither do I,” said Cheyenne and left.
“What was that all about?” Miss Carter asked when he caught up with her.
Cheyenne shook his head. “Chess problem. Nothin’ to worry about.”
She smiled like she didn’t believe him but wasn’t going to press the issue.
“Need me to come with you to talk to Vanger?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll call Fusco this time-we’ll need to stage Vanger’s death to get him out of town and get Laskey off the hook, and Fusco’s better at that than you are. But I might need you tomorrow. Gonna have Laskey shadow Simmons for me, and we might need some backup when we meet afterward to get his intel.”
He nodded. “Just let me know when an’ where.”
“I can pick you up.”
He nodded again, and they went their separate ways, although they kept in touch by phone until the next evening. Price, it turned out, had altered an email with Vanger’s instructions for the day, telling him to bid on a genuine autographed baseball instead of the phony item being sold by HR. Price had then sent a boy to buy the ball from Vanger for almost nothing, escaped from Reese’s custody, and bought a ball from the boy at a slight profit-but Price’s girl had gotten to the boy first, so the ball Price bought was phony. While Sam and Reese stopped Terney and his HR thugs from killing Price the next morning, the girl escaped from everyone and got away with the real ball.
“If you wanna say ‘I told you so,’” Reese told Cheyenne at the safe house that evening, “go right ahead.”
Cheyenne shook his head, but he was smiling. “I just know too many of Bret Maverick’s stories to think this one had any shot at a real happy endin’ for Price.”
“HR’s startin’ to come unglued over this,” added Miss Carter, who’d come to collect Cheyenne. “Quinn’s probably puttin’ the heat on Simmons, ’cause I just heard Simmons threaten to kill Terney if he an’ Laskey don’t come up with the ball. Sounds like Terney’s gettin’ tired of takin’ orders from Simmons, too.”
“Four million dollars is an expensive mistake,” Reese noted.
“I used to like Terney, until he tried to shoot me in the back and then hung me out to dry with IAB. Now?” Miss Carter shook her head. “I really wouldn’t care if Simmons does kill him-but I can’t let them kill Laskey, not now, not when he’s just startin’ to get his head straight.”
Cheyenne nodded and grabbed his suitcoat, remembering his chess match with Elias. “Let’s go make sure that won’t happen.”
It was just after 11 when Cheyenne and Miss Carter arrived at Laskey’s apartment building, where Laskey had asked Miss Carter to meet him in front of the mail room. There was an open door just before the wall of mailboxes, so Cheyenne concealed himself there and waited until Laskey arrived and showed Miss Carter the photos he’d taken.
Miss Carter had just warned Laskey that the situation was about to heat up when Terney arrived, gun in hand, and taunted Laskey about having been weak enough for Miss Carter to turn him. Miss Carter aimed her gun at Terney, and Cheyenne silently drew his own, waiting for the right moment to break the Mexican standoff.
“So let me tell you how the world works now, kid,” Terney continued, stopping conveniently in front of the door behind which Cheyenne was hiding. “We kill her, or they kill us.”
“That decision is gonna be your last, Terney,” Miss Carter stated as Cheyenne took careful aim.
And then, before Laskey could go for his gun and ruin everything, Cheyenne put a bullet straight through Terney’s right wrist. Terney’s hand spasmed, and his gun fired before it flew out of his hand; but Cheyenne’s shot had done its job, and Terney’s went harmlessly into the wall beyond Laskey. Then Terney’s gun hit the ground and went off again, and Laskey cried out and dropped to one knee, clutching his left leg. Cheyenne stepped out of his hiding place to keep Terney covered while Miss Carter holstered her gun and ripped open Laskey’s trouser leg to check his wound.
For his part, Terney held his bleeding wrist and gaped at Cheyenne. “Merritt!”
“Surprised to see me, Terney?” Cheyenne asked.
Terney’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he begged, “Please… I got a family.”
Cheyenne was unmoved. “Shoulda thought of that ’fore you got mixed up with HR.”
“You’re okay,” Miss Carter told Laskey and came over to take Terney’s tie. “You’re okay. You’re gonna need stitches, but it’s just a graze. Here, tie this around it while I call a friend to come take care of it.”
“Thank you,” Laskey squeaked.
“Look,” pleaded Terney, still looking at Cheyenne, “I didn’t come here to kill Carter or the kid, honest. Simmons wants me and the kid to find the real ball. He’s gonna kill us if we don’t come up with it.”
“That’s too bad,” Cheyenne replied. “The girl double-crossed Price and skipped town with the real ball. She’s long gone.”
Terney closed his eyes in defeat. “Then go ahead and kill me now.”
“I don’t think so,” said Miss Carter, collecting the pictures Laskey had dropped. “The way I see it, you owe me-and right now? I’m gonna collect.”
Terney opened his eyes and looked at her in mingled pain and worry. “Collect how?”
Miss Carter held out a hand to Cheyenne, who guessed her plan and passed her his handkerchief in exchange for the pictures. “We’re gonna take you to the hospital,” she said, shaking out the handkerchief and using it to bandage Terney’s wrist. “And while you’re there, you’re gonna deliver a message for me.”
Terney looked even more worried. “A message? To Simmons?”
“Nope. To Peter Yogorov.”
Terney’s eyes widened.
Miss Carter turned to bid good night to Laskey, who was resting on a nearby couch while he waited for Sam. Then Cheyenne and Miss Carter hustled Terney out to her car and explained the plan on the way to the hospital. Unsurprisingly, Terney agreed; what did surprise Cheyenne was how eager Terney was to go through with it.
When Cheyenne mentioned it, Terney shook his head. “Simmons has been treating me like a rookie all day. I mean, it’s been bad enough taking orders from a uni, but today he really went too far. You give me a chance to save my life, my wife, and my daughters and get back at Simmons? Hell yeah, I’m gonna take it.”
“We’re not doin’ it for you, Terney,” Miss Carter said flatly.
Terney sighed. “I know this is too little, too late, Carter, but for what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what part? Tryin’ to shoot me in the back? Lyin’ to IAB? Threatening Fusco? Threatening Taylor? Tryin’ to shoot us tonight?!”
“All of it! All right? All of it!”
Miss Carter shook her head. “Sorry won’t bring back Szymanski and Cal.”
It was a moment before Terney replied quietly, “I know. Like I said.”
Another moment passed before Miss Carter said, “Better make that call.”
“Yeah.” Terney dug his telephone out of his pocket with his left hand and called Yogorov to meet him at the emergency room.
At the hospital, Miss Carter dropped Terney off at the emergency room door, then had Cheyenne use her telephone to eavesdrop on Terney while she found a place to park out of sight. Terney had to turn his telephone off while he underwent emergency surgery to stabilize the broken bones and stop the bleeding, but Cheyenne and Miss Carter were still able to hear when Yogorov arrived at Terney’s bedside.
“Oh, thank God!” Terney sighed when he saw his visitor. “Yogorov, you gotta help me.”
“What happened to you?” asked a voice Cheyenne had heard only once before, on the tape Gen Zhirova had made of HR’s meeting with the Bratva about their joint venture.
“Simmons.”
“Simmons?!”
“He’s losin’ it. Ever since we lost that girl with the tapes-”
“I did not order her to spy on that meeting!”
“I know that-now. But Simmons still believes you did. Then there was that mess with Petrovitch goin’ after Merritt without orders.”
“That wasn’t my fault, either.”
“And neither was old man Morozov’s skimmin’ money from his protection payment. The point is, Simmons has gotten twitchy about you guys in particular, and he’s gettin’ twitchy about everything in general. He’s losin’ control of HR, and since the boss is on his back about it, he’s gettin’ on ours. And now, after this thing with the Swede….”
“Whoa, whoa, what thing with the Swede?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“No, what happened?”
Terney sighed. “He got conned by his therapist, who got conned by his girlfriend, who just skipped town with a real autographed baseball worth $4.4 million of our money. Even if I knew where she went, she’s probably already sold it by now. Simmons is gonna kill me.”
“So what,” Yogorov asked, “you want me to cough up another $4 million?”
“No, just… get me and my family out of town. Please. Anywhere. I don’t even care if you send us to Russia. Just get us outta here.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I know enough to put you back inside for the rest of your life and make sure your brother never sees the outside again.”
Before Yogorov could reply, Miss Carter reached over and disconnected her telephone from Terney’s.
“Don’t you wanna hear the rest?” Cheyenne asked as she started the car.
“I don’t care,” Miss Carter stated. “Whatever happens next is on Yogorov’s head. I’ve already got what I need to turn him in to the Feds. And whether he saves Terney or kills him, it’ll look bad to Simmons and Quinn.”
Cheyenne said nothing, only thought again of his chess match with Elias. He wondered whether Elias would have foreseen the red king being the one to decide the black bishop’s fate… and what all the players’ next moves would be.
Next
* Paraphrased from Cheyenne 5.3 “Road to Three Graves”
** I didn’t want to get too far off in the weeds describing this game, especially since I’m not a student of chess myself; but for those who might be curious, I’m picturing Elias (appropriately enough) using the Sicilian Defense, which fell out of favor in the 1870s but was revived after World War II.
*** Maverick 1.3 “According to Hoyle” (the woman in question being Samantha Crawford)
A/N: Some of the conversation in this chapter and the next two was inspired by Michaelssw0rd’s banner for the POI Big Bang. Also, I’m having to guesstimate dates for “The Perfect Mark” based on the dates given for “Mors Praematura” (October 9-12) and “Endgame”/“The Crossing” (November 10-13); there are no holiday references in “The Perfect Mark” that would help me pin it down relative to Halloween, but there’s a moment in the next chapter that works a little better if it’s set before Daylight Savings ends on November 3.
Chapter 9
Breakthrough
“So, like, I don’t actually know in what order the tasing and the drugging happened,” Sam said the next morning over breakfast Cheyenne and Mr. Finch had brought from the Lyric Diner. “I just know I woke up, and she was there, and I couldn’t get up to take her down before she tased me. Then the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the front seat of her car, zip-tied to the steering wheel.”
“Did she say anything, like why she grabbed you?” Reese asked, helping himself to another Belgian waffle.
Sam shook her head. “Just cryptic stuff about the Machine giving her a mission that doesn’t fit with the relevant-irrelevant split. In fact, most of what she said the last three days was cryptic because apparently the Machine only tells her what to do right before she’s supposed to do it. What she said last night about Decima? I actually believed her when she said that was the first time she’d heard any of it.” She stuffed an entire strip of bacon into her mouth.
Mr. Finch pulled a wry face and passed Reese his plate for more eggs Benedict. “I suppose we have Collier to thank for the Machine’s decision to give us a straight answer about the bigger picture.”
“So why’d you guys steal the medical supply van?” asked Reese.
“Mm!” Sam answered, held up a finger, and swallowed. “Oxygen tank. I used that with spaghetti to make a thermal lance.”
“What for?”
“There’s a maintenance tunnel or something that runs under Cooper Square, but the entrance was blocked with a grate. Root had me cut a hole in it to serve as an escape hatch for Greenfield.” Sam swiped a bite of Cheyenne’s steak and eggs with her knife. “Then we went to a CIA drop site so Root could be ‘captured’ yesterday and get us both in the truck with Greenfield.” She popped the bite in her mouth.
Cheyenne moved his plate and glared at her to stop her from stealing another. “If you wanted steak and eggs, you shoulda said so when we called.”
Unrepentant, Sam went back to eating all the bacon. Reese moved that container and put a second bacon-cheese omelet on her plate. She made a very unladylike gesture but doused the omelet in Tabasco sauce and tucked into it like she hadn’t already had one.
Mr. Finch shook his head, but not at their antics. “I still don’t understand why the Machine would send two teams into the same battle with different assignments. Why keep us in the dark about the Greenfield mission? What is this new third category into which Greenfield apparently falls?”
“Last night, it referred to Root as its analog interface,” Cheyenne noted. “What does that mean?”
“I can answer only in the most general terms,” said Mr. Finch. “Computer code, in its most basic form, is expressed as binary numbers, strings of ones and zeroes. Because those are digits, computers are considered digital machines, and by extension anything computerized or anything that exists solely on a computer or that can be accessed only by computer is called ‘digital.’ The rest of the world is called ‘analog.’ And an interface is a point where two systems connect and interact.”
Cheyenne nodded slowly. “So… the Machine is digital. To interact with the analog side of the world, it needs an interface.”
Mr. Finch looked relieved that he’d understood. “Yes, exactly.”
“But why Root?”
“That’s the $64,000 question,” said Reese.
Sam made a disgusted noise. “I swear, she talks to that thing like it’s her girlfriend.”
“Jealous?” Reese teased and ate a piece of bacon.
“What? No. Are you kidding?”
Cheyenne decided not even to try to work out what they were talking about. His not-so-old discomfort with the idea of artificial intelligence was coming back with a vengeance, not helped at all by the notion that the Machine had apologized to him or by the idea that it was aware enough of its own limitations and its difference from humans to have chosen a go-between-not that he thought much of its selection of Root when, by Reese’s own admission, she wasn’t the only person it had ever spoken to that way, even before Cheyenne had come along.
And speaking of coming back with a vengeance, Sam made another stab at Cheyenne’s steak. Unfortunately for her, his arms were long enough to move his plate two seats away and back before she could run past him. She squeaked indignantly, which caught Bear’s attention, and when Cheyenne continued to block her, she smacked his shoulder-not hard, but hard enough to feel.
“Get your own!” he insisted.
“I thought you claimed me as your sister!” she shot back.
“That don’t entitle you to my steak!”
Bear barked, and Mr. Finch looked like he was getting a headache.
“Now, children,” Reese chided, not quite able to keep from smiling.
“If you’re not going to finish your omelet, Miss Shaw…” Mr. Finch began.
Sam hit Cheyenne again, went back to her seat, and wolfed down the rest of her omelet in record time.
Mr. Finch turned to Reese. “By the way, Mr. Reese, Sloan’s asked us to meet him at Greenfield’s apartment this afternoon for a final farewell.”
Reese nodded. “Sounds good.”
Cheyenne put the last bite of his steak in his mouth a split second before Sam’s knife hit his empty plate. She huffed and tried to swipe another piece of bacon, only for Reese to catch her wrist.
“You’ll give yourself indigestion eating that fast, Shaw,” he said seriously.
Sam rolled her eyes and pulled back. “Okay, fine. Can I go home now?”
“Is Collier stable?” Mr. Finch asked.
“Yeah, his blood pressure’s stabilized. I’ll pick up a phone on my way home and text you the number, but don’t call unless it’s an emergency-like, ‘need a surgeon stat’ kind of emergency. I haven’t showered or slept in three days, so y’know. I’d like to do both.”
“We understand,” Mr. Finch said for all the men. “Thank you, and-it’s good to have you back, Miss Shaw.”
“Yeah, whatever.” But Sam made sure to give Bear some farewell scratches on her way out the door.
Cheyenne shook his head as the door closed behind Sam. “I don’t think I ever will get used to her.”
Reese smiled. “She wouldn’t pick on you like that if she didn’t like you. She likes you even more because you fight back.”
Mr. Finch sighed. “Well, if you’ve finished your meal, Mr. Bodie, would you mind seeing if our guest is ready for his?”
“Yes, sir,” Cheyenne agreed with a nod and took his plate to the kitchen. Since Collier couldn’t walk without assistance yet, Mr. Finch had assigned Cheyenne to the safe house for the day in case Collier needed anything-and in case the microchip had contained a GPS transponder that Decima might have tracked already.
Cheyenne paused in the hall on his way and used the reflection in the glass of a picture to look into the bedroom so as not to disturb Collier if he was still asleep. Collier was awake and looking out the window, however, so after Cheyenne put his own plate in the sink, he found a bed tray and loaded it with Collier’s covered plate, which had been keeping warm on the back burner, and a napkin and a cup of coffee. Then he turned off the burner and carried the tray into the bedroom.
“Mornin’,” he said as he walked in. “Hope we didn’t wake you.”
“No more than that did,” Collier replied, gesturing toward the monitor stand with his left thumb. “What was all that about, though?”
“Ah, little sisters.”
Collier laughed.
Cheyenne set the tray over Collier’s lap and took the cover off the plate to reveal the sandwich he’d ordered, since Collier had been asleep when Mr. Finch had called and neither Mr. Finch nor Sam had been sure what Collier would want for breakfast. “It’s a grilled cheese sandwich with extra bacon and tomato,” he announced, unwrapping it for Collier. “I’ve had these a few times; they’re pretty tasty, even with what passes for a tomato this late in the year. An’ I’ve had my arm in a sling often enough to know how tough it is to try to eat with your left hand when you’re not used to it.”
Collier eyed the sandwich skeptically. “Thanks… I guess.” The diner had cut the sandwich on the diagonal, so he picked up one half and took a tentative bite-and his eyes lit up in pleased surprise. “Mm!” He nodded at Cheyenne and flashed a thumbs-up with his right hand.
Cheyenne grinned. “Well, I’ll let you get on with it.” And he turned to go.
“Mm,” said Collier, shaking his head when Cheyenne looked at him again, and swallowed his bite of sandwich. “No, please stay. I’d like to talk to you.”
Cheyenne paused. “All right. Do you mind if I get myself some more coffee first?”
“No, not at all. While you’re at it, could you bring me some creamer for mine?”
“I think what we’ve got is half-and-half. Is that all right?”
Collier shrugged. “Sure.”
Cheyenne nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
Reese was in the kitchen, washing the breakfast dishes, when Cheyenne walked in. “Finch already left,” Reese reported quietly. “He has to put in an appearance at Universal Heritage Insurance this week, so it might as well be today.”
Cheyenne smiled in amusement. Having needed only two cover identities so far, neither of which held office jobs, he hadn’t had to do the sort of two-step that Mr. Finch and Reese did to keep up appearances. He’d often wondered how they managed it when they had a case; now he knew.
“How’s Collier?” Reese continued.
“Awake and eatin’,” Cheyenne answered, finding a clean mug and pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Says he wants to talk to me.”
Reese’s eyebrows shot up, but then he nodded thoughtfully. “Hope that’s a good sign.”
“Me, too.”
“By the way, about Finch… I saw the look you gave him when Root mentioned the ferry bombing.”
“And?” Cheyenne asked, hoping Collier hadn’t also noticed.
Reese lowered his voice further. “You’re half right. They were after Nathan Ingram, Finch’s business partner and his best friend since they went to MIT together. Nobody else involved with Northern Lights knew Finch even existed until last year. They did kill Ingram. But Finch was there, too, and that was when he was injured.”
Cheyenne nodded slowly.
“I don’t think Shaw knows,” Reese added. “Finch didn’t tell me until we got back from Oregon in May, and that was after we’d been working together for two years. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
Cheyenne nodded again. “I understand. I’ll keep it under my hat.”
Reese smiled. “Thanks.”
On that note, Cheyenne collected a spoon and the half-and-half and went back to the bedroom. Collier had already finished one half of his sandwich and was working on the other when Cheyenne came in, so Cheyenne poured cream into Collier’s coffee until he said when, stirred it for him, and took cream and spoon back to the kitchen before returning with his own coffee.
“All right,” Cheyenne said, pulling a chair up to the bed. “What’d you want to talk about?”
“Not that it’s any of my business, really,” Collier began carefully, “but… where’d you hear what Crazy Horse and Dull Knife said before the Little Bighorn?”
Cheyenne decided to go for a more plausible explanation than I was there. “I was raised on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.”
Collier blinked in surprise. “Really?!”
Cheyenne nodded. “I was adopted as a baby by a Cheyenne family. Grew up hearin’ all the old stories.”
“Huh, wow. Sorry, I’m just… surprised an adoption agency would allow that.”
“Well, I don’t know all the whys an’ wherefores. All my father told me is that my folks were killed in a wreck an’ they couldn’t find any o’ my kin to come claim me.”
Collier nodded thoughtfully. “But you said you had a foster family.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Cheyenne took a drink of coffee while he considered how to explain that. “See, my father got into a blood feud with one o’ the local ranchers. Long story short, when I was twelve, I went to live with a white family on another ranch. Stayed with them about three years, until Mr. Pierce was killed, an’ then I went back to the reservation until I was eighteen.” Pierce was a common enough name that Cheyenne reckoned it was safe to mention.
Collier nodded again. “And then what, Army?”
“Among other things.” Cheyenne punctuated that with a drink of coffee and hoped that would be a clear enough signal that he wouldn’t share more.
Collier washed down the last bite of his sandwich with a drink of his own coffee. “I just wondered,” he said when he’d swallowed. “You seem to know a lot about things I’ve never read in any history book.”
Cheyenne shrugged. “History books can only tell you so much.”
“You mean history’s written by the winners.”
“Well, not only that. Every historian’s got his own views of the past, and even when he’s tryin’ to be fair, he’s still got to pick an’ choose how to make the facts fit together in a story folks can read without gettin’ lost. You take the Little Bighorn, for example. Most books’ll give you a map with neat little markers and arrows an’ labels that tell you ‘Benteen was here,’ ‘Reno was there,’ ‘Custer was over yonder,’ an’ so on. Battles are never that neat in real life; they’re chaos. Even when there’s a good, clear plan based on good information about the terrain an’ the enemy’s strength, it never goes exactly like you figured. It’s worse when your information’s wrong or your scouts lied to you. The books can’t tell what it was like to be there on the ground, either-what Benteen saw, what Reno heard, the smell o’ the dust an’ gunpowder an’ horse an’ blood, the awful hate that went through the Cheyenne when Custer had the band play ‘Garryowen,’ the shouts o’ the warriors an’ the screams o’ the dyin’. You’ll never find those in any book, not even if a historian had dared to ask. There aren’t words for ’em.”
There weren’t words for the nightmares, either-Cheyenne had woken up screaming again several times before Mr. Finch had called that morning-but admitting that would be tantamount to admitting he’d been there as Touch the Sky. He may have come too close to doing so already. Besides, he’d said more about the Little Bighorn in the past twelve hours than he had since Reno’s hearing. He really hoped Collier wouldn’t ask for further details.
“I dunno,” said Collier. “That was pretty evocative, what you just said.”
Cheyenne shook his head. “Doesn’t even scratch the surface. It’s like tryin’ to explain what it’s like the first time you fall in love, or the first time you lose someone, or the first time you kill a man.”
Collier suddenly found his coffee very interesting. Cheyenne waited, though, and eventually Collier sighed. “The men I’ve killed deserved to die,” he said quietly, not looking up.
“Really? You were all set to kill Sloan. What’d he ever do to you?”
“He was getting too close.”
“So it’s all right to kill to protect secrets as long as they’re your own?”
Collier looked up at that, annoyed. “Why are you defending the government?”
Cheyenne shrugged. “I’m not. I ain’t too happy about the spyin’ myself, and what happened to your brother was wrong.”
“Then you understand why I have to get justice.”
“I understand, all right, but you’re not talkin’ about justice. You’re talkin’ vengeance.”
Collier looked away with a huff. “What’s the difference?”
“Justice can be satisfied.”
Collier looked at him again with a confused frown.
“Justice has limits,” Cheyenne explained. “Justice draws a clear line, says ‘This far, no further,’ and won’t cross that line no matter what. Justice can be tempered with mercy and compassion. There’s no room for those in revenge. Even if revenge draws the line an’ doesn’t cross it, it always feels hollow. But too often revenge blurs the line or won’t draw it at all. Then you can’t stop killin’ until there’s nobody left-only the empty place you couldn’t fill, ’cause all that blood won’t bring back the one you lost.”
“Set out to correct the world’s wrongs,” Reese added softly from the doorway, “and you’ll almost certainly end up adding to them.”
Collier looked down at his coffee again.
Cheyenne watched in silence for a moment until an old memory suddenly came back to him. “You know, I met a priest once,” he began, “down near the border in a town called Security. The local landowner ran that place like his own private kingdom, paid the people who lived there in food an’ shelter so they couldn’t afford to leave.”
Collier huffed and looked up. “Sounds like slavery.”
“Well, it was in all but name.” Most of the people who’d lived there, in fact, had been Southerners who’d lost everything either during the war or in the first year of Reconstruction, and it had been the height of irony for them to have fallen into Manuel Loza’s trap-but Cheyenne hadn’t dared to say so even in 1866, let alone now. Besides, trading freedom for security was never a good bargain, no matter how one looked at it. “Anyway,” he continued, “I got to talkin’ with Father Mendez, and he said somethin’ I’ll never forget.”
“Which was?”
“He said when men decide to play God, they find out pretty quick the only one o’ His powers they have is the power of destruction.”*
Collier sighed heavily. “Sometimes things have to be destroyed so they can be rebuilt.”
“Rebuilt into what, though? Seems to me your Vigilance pals haven’t thought that through.”
Collier shook his head stubbornly. “The people we target deserve to die.”
“‘Many that live deserve death,’” Reese countered-and for once, Cheyenne recognized the quotation. He hadn’t gotten far in reading The Lord of the Rings, but he did remember this part and nodded as Reese continued, “‘And some who die deserve life,’ like your brother. ‘Can you give it to them?’”
Collier closed his eyes in pain that obviously wasn’t physical.
“Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement,” Cheyenne recited further. “For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Collier shook his head again and opened his eyes. “I have to make them pay for what they did to Jesse.”
“And you think the people who microchipped you like a stray dog are your best bet?” Reese challenged.
Collier flinched-but then huffed with a smile. “You guys keep giving me things to think hard about.”
“Good,” said Reese as Cheyenne stood. “Here’s one more: if we didn’t believe you could be reasoned with, we wouldn’t have saved your life.”
Collier saluted with his coffee cup and a rueful smile, drained the cup, and put it back on the tray before Cheyenne picked it up and left the room with Reese.
“Think he will?” Cheyenne asked quietly as Reese started washing Collier’s dishes.
“Will what?” Reese returned.
“Change his mind, maybe work with us.”
Reese shook his head a little. “Hard to say. He’ll think about it, at least, but… you can’t reason someone out of a position he wasn’t reasoned into.”
Cheyenne conceded the point with a tilt of his head and picked up a towel to dry.
After that, life fell back into an easier pattern for the next two weeks, with Mr. Finch watching over Root at the library and Sam, Reese, and Cheyenne taking turns assisting Collier at the safe house. Sam wanted Collier walking at least as far as the privy by the end of the first day, but until he could get the hang of balancing all his weight on his good leg and one crutch, he did need help. The fact that Reese and Cheyenne were willing to give that help without comment seemed to give Collier yet more to chew on, although he kept his conversations with them on lighter subjects than before. For her part, Miss Carter reported that Laskey had found HR stockpiling millions of dollars, but neither of them had learned why or come up with a new way to send word to Yogorov that Simmons was targeting Russian businesses for harsher protection measures.
No sooner had Sam and Cheyenne agreed that Collier was able to fend for himself everywhere except in the kitchen, though, than Mr. Finch needed Sam and Reese to help him with the case of a snake-oil salesman posing as a “hypnotherapist” (whatever that meant). Hayden Price was swindling virtually everyone in his life except his girlfriend, which meant-if the Mavericks’ record with Samantha Crawford and Modesty Blaine were anything to go by-that his girlfriend was bound to be swindling him somehow. So Cheyenne was just as happy to look after Collier while Sam and Reese looked after Price… at least until the third day of the case, when Reese, following Price, and Miss Carter, following Laskey, met up outside an auction house frequented by one of Price’s victims and discovered they were on the same trail.
“They call him ‘the Swede,’” Miss Carter explained when she called Cheyenne that evening. “His real name’s Sven Vanger, and he’s an antique dealer-who’s apparently laundering money for HR. Simmons and Terney told Laskey to kill Vanger after he does one last job for them tomorrow.”
Cheyenne frowned. “You think Price might be after HR’s money?”
“That’s what it looks like, but we don’t know how yet.” She sighed. “Can you leave Collier for a few hours tomorrow morning?”
“If not, Mr. Finch can probably sit with him. Why?”
“I’m meeting a contact to find out more about the money laundering… but my contact never gives information for nothing, and this time his price is that he wants to meet you.”
He had a sneaking suspicion about the identity of this contact and wasn’t sure he wanted to meet the fellow-but neither did he want her going to the meeting alone. “I’ll tell Mr. Finch you need backup.”
“Thanks, Cheyenne,” she said with an audible smile and told him where and when to meet her. “Be sure to wait behind the building,” she cautioned. “I’ll have Laskey with me.”
“Got it.”
“If you get there early and someone challenges you, tell ’em you’re supposed to meet me there. If they don’t recognize the name Jim Merritt, they’ll recognize mine.”
“Fine.” Then something prompted him to ask, “Is everything all right, Miss Carter?”
She sighed again. “I’m just… I’m tired, you know? I’m ready for all this to be over. Quinn called me to meet him for coffee this morning, and… it was all I could do not to let on that I know.”
Truth be told, he was tired of it all, too, and he wanted to go home. Kind as his new friends were, he’d give anything to see Tom Brewster, Bronco Layne, and his other old friends again. Besides, if anyone could talk sense into Collier, it would be quick-witted, tenderhearted Tom.
But all Cheyenne said aloud was, “Maybe we’ll have somethin’ to go on this time tomorrow.”
“I sure hope so,” said Miss Carter.
After they said their good nights, Cheyenne called Mr. Finch, who was glad to have a reason to avoid Price for the morning. “HR sent a hit team to shoot up his office,” Mr. Finch reported, “but even that has not convinced him to level with us completely. At least Collier has done us that courtesy.”
“Where’s Price now?” Cheyenne asked.
“At one of our other safe houses. I wouldn’t have wanted him to know about that one, even without Collier there. But he’ll be safe enough with Mr. Reese and Miss Shaw guarding him.”
So everything was arranged, and the next morning, Cheyenne rose early, consulted his maps one last time, and ventured out to brave the subways and buses to reach the meeting site. He arrived about half an hour early, but before he could find a place to wait for Miss Carter out of sight, two thugs met him on the sidewalk.
“Who are you?” asked one of them.
“Jim Merritt,” Cheyenne replied. “I’m supposed to meet Joss Carter here, but I’m early.”
The thugs looked at each other and exchanged nods. “Text her,” said the second thug, who had a long scar below the corner of his right eye. “Tell her we’re takin’ you in to see the boss.”
“Mind if I call instead? I can’t get the hang o’ the keyboard on this thing,” Cheyenne admitted, brandishing his pocket telephone. The concept of the text message wasn’t too different from that of the telegram, but he had enough trouble trying to type on a typewriter or computer, let alone something as fiddly and sensitive as a touchscreen. Reese, Fusco, and Miss Carter had all assured him that it was a common problem.
“Put it on speaker,” the second thug ordered.
Cheyenne dialed first and then turned on the speakerphone.
“Talk fast,” Miss Carter answered, and the thugs seemed to recognize her voice.
“It’s me,” Cheyenne replied. “I’m here early. They’re takin’ me inside.”
“All right.” She didn’t sound pleased, but whether she knew the telephone was in speaker mode or not, they both knew it wouldn’t be wise for him to refuse. “I’ll see you soon.” And she hung up.
Apparently satisfied, the thugs ushered Cheyenne in the building’s front door and down a dimly-lit staircase to an equally dimly-lit basement. The brightest light, almost like a spotlight, shone over a long table in the center of the room, at the head of which sat a balding, bespectacled man who looked up at Cheyenne with a bland, pleasant smile and didn’t look at all like the most dangerous man in New York.
“Welcome, Mr. Merritt,” said he. “I was hoping you’d be early and we’d have a chance to talk before Det. Carter arrives. I’m Carl Elias.”
“Elias,” Cheyenne returned with a nod. “Seems I’ve heard of you.”
“You know, it’s funny, but I hadn’t heard of you until this summer. I suspect our friends Harold and John had something to do with that.”
Cheyenne carefully said nothing.
Elias’ smile broadened in amusement. “You’re a cautious man. I like that. Please,” he said, gesturing to a seat, and the scar-faced thug pulled it out to let Cheyenne sit down. “Will you join me in a glass of wine? Brunello Di Montalcino-the finish is quite exquisite.”
“I’d just as soon have coffee, if it’s all the same to you.” Cheyenne never had liked the taste of wine; he’d drink whiskey or beer on occasion, but not often and never much. It didn’t seem wise to refuse Elias’ hospitality altogether, though.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Elias. “From what I’ve read, you are a… recovering alcoholic.”
“Yes, sir,” Cheyenne lied. Living with Charley Dolan, the drunk who’d taken him in the second time he’d left the People and who’d fought to get and stay sober for Cheyenne’s sake, had put Cheyenne off the idea of drinking to excess long ago. But the real Merritt had been a drunk, and that was part of the cover identity they’d established in this year as well.
Elias nodded. “How do you take your coffee?”
“Black, please.”
Elias looked up at Scarface, who nodded and left. “So I hear you’re working with Det. Carter on this HR case,” Elias told Cheyenne then.
Cheyenne nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“How’s that going?”
“Slowly.”
Elias nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I offered more than once to take care of HR for her, permanently. She turned me down every time.”
“HR’s like a rattlesnake. Only sure way to kill it is to cut off its head. From what I heard, you didn’t know who the head was.”
“Do you?”
Cheyenne didn’t answer. Elias watched him for a moment, until Scarface returned with the coffee. Cheyenne nodded his thanks and drank cautiously; the coffee tasted good and didn’t seem to be drugged or poisoned, so he drank more deeply.
“Do you play chess, Mr. Merritt?” Elias asked then.
Cheyenne shrugged. “Sometimes.” He knew Elias wasn’t a man to be hustled, but he wasn’t going to admit to his actual skill level, either-not that he’d actively studied the game by reading books on the subject, but he had had plenty of practice.
Scarface brought over a chess set as Elias said, “I haven’t had a good game since the last time I saw Harold back in April. Frankly, I’m surprised Det. Carter has managed to avoid telling them about me this long. I can only assume she’s embarrassed to admit to our deal.”
Cheyenne frowned. “Deal?”
Elias raised his eyebrows and began setting up the black chessmen at his end of the board. “Didn’t she tell you? She saved my life. Then we agreed she’d let me go as long as Anthony”-here he gestured to Scarface-“and I keep a low profile. Hence my new… palatial surroundings.”
“Pretty ironic, considering,” said Scar-er, Anthony.
“Considerin’ what?” Cheyenne asked, setting up the white chessmen.
Elias placed his last piece and looked up. “Once upon a time, I tried to kill her.”
Cheyenne looked up at him sharply.
“I kidnapped her son, too. John rescued him. If I’d known then what I know now….” Elias shook his head. “Then again, maybe it’s all for the best. Going to prison was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and John actually needed me there about this time last year.”
Cheyenne didn’t know what it said about Elias’ life that prison was one of the best parts of it, but he didn’t comment. He simply finished setting up, took another drink of coffee, and made his first move. Elias answered with a move Cheyenne hadn’t seen in a while, so it took him a moment to remember the best strategy to counter with.** When he did make his second move, Elias hummed thoughtfully and took time to consider his own strategy. Unsurprisingly, Elias was an aggressive player, but so was Cheyenne, and each side was soon down several major pieces.
“Very interesting, Mr. Merritt,” Elias said as they chased each other around the board. “You play exactly like I’d expect someone from the nineteenth century to play… someone like your character from that play that failed-what was his name, Cheyenne Bodie?”
“Guess you could say I’m a method actor,” Cheyenne replied and captured another piece.
Elias chuckled and knocked over his king, conceding the game. “You’ve got me in three moves. Care for another?”
Cheyenne checked his watch and found they still had some time before Miss Carter was due to arrive. “Why not?”
They reset the board and began again. But this time, it quickly became apparent that Elias was playing not as himself but as Quinn, casting Cheyenne in the role of Mr. Finch and his team. Cheyenne didn’t say anything, but after he’d captured several pawns, he put one of them back on his own front rank, representing Laskey.
Elias looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “Is that so?”
“Your move,” said Cheyenne.
“Well, the most obvious move is….” Elias moved a bishop to threaten the Laskey pawn; Cheyenne suspected that was supposed to be Terney, but he wasn’t sure. It would make sense if Quinn were the black king and Simmons the black queen, but Cheyenne didn’t know if Terney had equals at his level of HR. “But of course that pawn is protected by this rook,” Elias continued, shifting one of Cheyenne’s rooks, clearly representing Miss Carter, to cover that square and threaten the black king at the same time. “If things remain as they are, the bishop takes the pawn and the rook takes the bishop. Question is whether white thinks that’s an acceptable exchange of material.”
Cheyenne considered the board. “Now supposin’….” He moved a knight, standing for himself, into a position that covered the pawn and threatened the bishop. “Does that take this bishop off the board, or can I have three bishops?”
“Hm. That depends. I happen to know this bishop has a family-I heard him beg for his life once. With the threat from both the rook and the knight… you might have three bishops, at least for a move or two. I’d take him off the board after that, though how you’d do that is probably different from the way I would.” Elias looked up at Cheyenne again. “Of course, you realize we really ought to be doing this with more players.”
“At least four?” Cheyenne asked knowingly.
Elias smiled. “Well, red and black are pretty tough to distinguish right now, and green’s mostly sitting it out on the sideline.”
“White’s been lookin’ for a way to turn red an’ black against each other.” Cheyenne pointed to the Terney bishop. “Would this be the piece to use?”
Elias leaned back and considered. “Better than the pawn,” he finally stated, “but not in isolation. You’d need some other pressure on both red and black, and that might be a reason for green to enter the game.”
Cheyenne was still pondering that when Miss Carter arrived to ask Elias about Vanger and the money laundering. Elias succeeded in pressuring her into tasting the wine-to her credit, she did no more than taste, although she seemed to agree with him that it was good-and explained that the laundered money was a kickback from the Bratva to HR in exchange for ignoring Yogorov’s escape from prison. The money would be delivered to Vanger, who’d deposit it in his own accounts before receiving separate instructions as to which lot to buy at the auction house that day. The purchased item, sold by someone working for HR, would be an overpriced fake.
“So if your con man thinks he can just swoop in and take a piece of HR’s business,” Elias concluded, “he’d better watch his back.”
“In more ways than one,” Cheyenne murmured as Elias took a drink of wine.
Miss Carter frowned. “How do you mean?”
“His girl.” Cheyenne shook his head. “It’s just a hunch, but… I know a woman who swindled a professional gambler out of $16,000 by insistin’ they play five-card stud accordin’ to Hoyle an’ then pullin’ some rule out o’ Hoyle’s book that none o’ the other players had ever heard of that meant his winnin’ hand wasn’t allowed.*** Won’t surprise me if Price gets bit the same way.”
“Cherchez la femme,” Elias agreed. “‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male’-and in this case, that could be literal, unless our friends intervene.”
“Well, we’ll pass that along,” said Miss Carter, nodding to Cheyenne, and they stood at the same time. “Thanks for your time,” she told Elias.
“My pleasure,” Elias returned with a smile. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Merritt.”
Cheyenne nodded, and as Miss Carter turned to leave, he started to follow.
He was almost to the door when Elias called after him, “Oh, by the way, Mr. Merritt….”
Cheyenne paused and looked back.
“Keep an eye on that rook, will you? I don’t want anyone else making the same mistake I made.”
“Neither do I,” said Cheyenne and left.
“What was that all about?” Miss Carter asked when he caught up with her.
Cheyenne shook his head. “Chess problem. Nothin’ to worry about.”
She smiled like she didn’t believe him but wasn’t going to press the issue.
“Need me to come with you to talk to Vanger?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll call Fusco this time-we’ll need to stage Vanger’s death to get him out of town and get Laskey off the hook, and Fusco’s better at that than you are. But I might need you tomorrow. Gonna have Laskey shadow Simmons for me, and we might need some backup when we meet afterward to get his intel.”
He nodded. “Just let me know when an’ where.”
“I can pick you up.”
He nodded again, and they went their separate ways, although they kept in touch by phone until the next evening. Price, it turned out, had altered an email with Vanger’s instructions for the day, telling him to bid on a genuine autographed baseball instead of the phony item being sold by HR. Price had then sent a boy to buy the ball from Vanger for almost nothing, escaped from Reese’s custody, and bought a ball from the boy at a slight profit-but Price’s girl had gotten to the boy first, so the ball Price bought was phony. While Sam and Reese stopped Terney and his HR thugs from killing Price the next morning, the girl escaped from everyone and got away with the real ball.
“If you wanna say ‘I told you so,’” Reese told Cheyenne at the safe house that evening, “go right ahead.”
Cheyenne shook his head, but he was smiling. “I just know too many of Bret Maverick’s stories to think this one had any shot at a real happy endin’ for Price.”
“HR’s startin’ to come unglued over this,” added Miss Carter, who’d come to collect Cheyenne. “Quinn’s probably puttin’ the heat on Simmons, ’cause I just heard Simmons threaten to kill Terney if he an’ Laskey don’t come up with the ball. Sounds like Terney’s gettin’ tired of takin’ orders from Simmons, too.”
“Four million dollars is an expensive mistake,” Reese noted.
“I used to like Terney, until he tried to shoot me in the back and then hung me out to dry with IAB. Now?” Miss Carter shook her head. “I really wouldn’t care if Simmons does kill him-but I can’t let them kill Laskey, not now, not when he’s just startin’ to get his head straight.”
Cheyenne nodded and grabbed his suitcoat, remembering his chess match with Elias. “Let’s go make sure that won’t happen.”
It was just after 11 when Cheyenne and Miss Carter arrived at Laskey’s apartment building, where Laskey had asked Miss Carter to meet him in front of the mail room. There was an open door just before the wall of mailboxes, so Cheyenne concealed himself there and waited until Laskey arrived and showed Miss Carter the photos he’d taken.
Miss Carter had just warned Laskey that the situation was about to heat up when Terney arrived, gun in hand, and taunted Laskey about having been weak enough for Miss Carter to turn him. Miss Carter aimed her gun at Terney, and Cheyenne silently drew his own, waiting for the right moment to break the Mexican standoff.
“So let me tell you how the world works now, kid,” Terney continued, stopping conveniently in front of the door behind which Cheyenne was hiding. “We kill her, or they kill us.”
“That decision is gonna be your last, Terney,” Miss Carter stated as Cheyenne took careful aim.
And then, before Laskey could go for his gun and ruin everything, Cheyenne put a bullet straight through Terney’s right wrist. Terney’s hand spasmed, and his gun fired before it flew out of his hand; but Cheyenne’s shot had done its job, and Terney’s went harmlessly into the wall beyond Laskey. Then Terney’s gun hit the ground and went off again, and Laskey cried out and dropped to one knee, clutching his left leg. Cheyenne stepped out of his hiding place to keep Terney covered while Miss Carter holstered her gun and ripped open Laskey’s trouser leg to check his wound.
For his part, Terney held his bleeding wrist and gaped at Cheyenne. “Merritt!”
“Surprised to see me, Terney?” Cheyenne asked.
Terney’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he begged, “Please… I got a family.”
Cheyenne was unmoved. “Shoulda thought of that ’fore you got mixed up with HR.”
“You’re okay,” Miss Carter told Laskey and came over to take Terney’s tie. “You’re okay. You’re gonna need stitches, but it’s just a graze. Here, tie this around it while I call a friend to come take care of it.”
“Thank you,” Laskey squeaked.
“Look,” pleaded Terney, still looking at Cheyenne, “I didn’t come here to kill Carter or the kid, honest. Simmons wants me and the kid to find the real ball. He’s gonna kill us if we don’t come up with it.”
“That’s too bad,” Cheyenne replied. “The girl double-crossed Price and skipped town with the real ball. She’s long gone.”
Terney closed his eyes in defeat. “Then go ahead and kill me now.”
“I don’t think so,” said Miss Carter, collecting the pictures Laskey had dropped. “The way I see it, you owe me-and right now? I’m gonna collect.”
Terney opened his eyes and looked at her in mingled pain and worry. “Collect how?”
Miss Carter held out a hand to Cheyenne, who guessed her plan and passed her his handkerchief in exchange for the pictures. “We’re gonna take you to the hospital,” she said, shaking out the handkerchief and using it to bandage Terney’s wrist. “And while you’re there, you’re gonna deliver a message for me.”
Terney looked even more worried. “A message? To Simmons?”
“Nope. To Peter Yogorov.”
Terney’s eyes widened.
Miss Carter turned to bid good night to Laskey, who was resting on a nearby couch while he waited for Sam. Then Cheyenne and Miss Carter hustled Terney out to her car and explained the plan on the way to the hospital. Unsurprisingly, Terney agreed; what did surprise Cheyenne was how eager Terney was to go through with it.
When Cheyenne mentioned it, Terney shook his head. “Simmons has been treating me like a rookie all day. I mean, it’s been bad enough taking orders from a uni, but today he really went too far. You give me a chance to save my life, my wife, and my daughters and get back at Simmons? Hell yeah, I’m gonna take it.”
“We’re not doin’ it for you, Terney,” Miss Carter said flatly.
Terney sighed. “I know this is too little, too late, Carter, but for what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what part? Tryin’ to shoot me in the back? Lyin’ to IAB? Threatening Fusco? Threatening Taylor? Tryin’ to shoot us tonight?!”
“All of it! All right? All of it!”
Miss Carter shook her head. “Sorry won’t bring back Szymanski and Cal.”
It was a moment before Terney replied quietly, “I know. Like I said.”
Another moment passed before Miss Carter said, “Better make that call.”
“Yeah.” Terney dug his telephone out of his pocket with his left hand and called Yogorov to meet him at the emergency room.
At the hospital, Miss Carter dropped Terney off at the emergency room door, then had Cheyenne use her telephone to eavesdrop on Terney while she found a place to park out of sight. Terney had to turn his telephone off while he underwent emergency surgery to stabilize the broken bones and stop the bleeding, but Cheyenne and Miss Carter were still able to hear when Yogorov arrived at Terney’s bedside.
“Oh, thank God!” Terney sighed when he saw his visitor. “Yogorov, you gotta help me.”
“What happened to you?” asked a voice Cheyenne had heard only once before, on the tape Gen Zhirova had made of HR’s meeting with the Bratva about their joint venture.
“Simmons.”
“Simmons?!”
“He’s losin’ it. Ever since we lost that girl with the tapes-”
“I did not order her to spy on that meeting!”
“I know that-now. But Simmons still believes you did. Then there was that mess with Petrovitch goin’ after Merritt without orders.”
“That wasn’t my fault, either.”
“And neither was old man Morozov’s skimmin’ money from his protection payment. The point is, Simmons has gotten twitchy about you guys in particular, and he’s gettin’ twitchy about everything in general. He’s losin’ control of HR, and since the boss is on his back about it, he’s gettin’ on ours. And now, after this thing with the Swede….”
“Whoa, whoa, what thing with the Swede?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“No, what happened?”
Terney sighed. “He got conned by his therapist, who got conned by his girlfriend, who just skipped town with a real autographed baseball worth $4.4 million of our money. Even if I knew where she went, she’s probably already sold it by now. Simmons is gonna kill me.”
“So what,” Yogorov asked, “you want me to cough up another $4 million?”
“No, just… get me and my family out of town. Please. Anywhere. I don’t even care if you send us to Russia. Just get us outta here.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I know enough to put you back inside for the rest of your life and make sure your brother never sees the outside again.”
Before Yogorov could reply, Miss Carter reached over and disconnected her telephone from Terney’s.
“Don’t you wanna hear the rest?” Cheyenne asked as she started the car.
“I don’t care,” Miss Carter stated. “Whatever happens next is on Yogorov’s head. I’ve already got what I need to turn him in to the Feds. And whether he saves Terney or kills him, it’ll look bad to Simmons and Quinn.”
Cheyenne said nothing, only thought again of his chess match with Elias. He wondered whether Elias would have foreseen the red king being the one to decide the black bishop’s fate… and what all the players’ next moves would be.
Next
* Paraphrased from Cheyenne 5.3 “Road to Three Graves”
** I didn’t want to get too far off in the weeds describing this game, especially since I’m not a student of chess myself; but for those who might be curious, I’m picturing Elias (appropriately enough) using the Sicilian Defense, which fell out of favor in the 1870s but was revived after World War II.
*** Maverick 1.3 “According to Hoyle” (the woman in question being Samantha Crawford)