The Zero Game

The plane rumbles forward, and I sink down in my seat. Outside the window, a man in blue cargo pants and a blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt rolls up the red carpet, stands at attention, and salutes us as we leave. Even when he’s finished, he just stands there, frozen in place – which is why I notice the sudden movement over his shoulder. Back in the hangar. The thin man on the cell phone presses his open palms against the plate-glass window and watches us leave.

“Any idea who that is?” I ask the flight attendant, noticing that she’s staring at him, too.

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

30

“THEY’RE ON A PLANE,” Janos said into his phone as he stormed out of the Hotel George, signaling the doorman for a cab.

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

“Believe me – I know.”

“Who told you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Actually, it does.”

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

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

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

“What’re you talking about?”

“Sell any good Renoirs lately?” Janos asked.

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

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

“Just tell me how you-”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where to?” the cabbie asked.

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

31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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