Games

Chapter 1. Near Khankala, Chechnya. August 23rd, 2002.

Zales could hear the screams of the women and children, the bark of the AK-47 assault rifles used by the soldiers of the 42nd Motor Rifle Division. The grinding of gears and crunching of rocks as the heavy battle tanks followed in behind the conscript soldiers and way in the distance the whoosh and whoomp of incendiary rockets fired from the safety of the military base fifteen kilometres away.

But he blacked out the screams of his closest friend, Talbot James, thirty feet away in the derelict warehouse that kontraktnikis had taken over within hours of the attack on the town being launched.

James’ hands were stretched out wide, tied to a wooden beam, which, high above him, supported the roof rafters. He was naked, standing on a frail chair, blood caked around a hole in his shoulder where he’d been hit in the first wave of the assault.

Zales was dangling from ropes similarly bound to his wrists and hoisted to a beam above, but in his case there was no chair. Zales was held on tiptoes, barely able to support his weight. He had no idea how long he had been here. Hours. Days. All he knew was the pain from the left leg that hung at a strange angle below his knee and the hole where the bone from the greenstick fracture had punched through.

He didn’t need to look down to check. He couldn’t look down. But he could feel it there.

What he could see was Talbot James, his mouth open as he screamed when the tall, gaunt man, a long white surgical gown incongruously covering his civilian clothing, repeatedly jabbed him with a cattle prod.

How long had they been here?

How long since they left the Pansiki Gorge across the Georgian Border with a small team of US Special Forces to see what was really happening in Grozny a couple of days after that Mil Mi-26 helicopter was shot down by the Chechens and crashed into a minefield, killing everyone on board?

Nearly one hundred and thirty dead the news reports had said.

There’ll be reprisals,’ Zales was told when his controller in Langley contacted him at Pansiki. ‘Be there. I want full details. Pictures too.’

Well, he was here and there were reprisals but whether he would ever live to report what he’d seen and was still seeing was another thing.

He lifted his head. The civilian was approaching him, the cattle prod linked to its long cable put aside. Zales felt the hollow opal black eyes staring straight through him, beyond the hooked nose that spoke of Semitic background.

Vacant eyes. Vacant features. Vacant soul.

Zales tried to concentrate. Remember this day. Remember for as long as he lived. Remember the blades in the wire dangling from the man’s hand, glinting in the light pouring in through the huge high windows. Blades that twisted and turned as the man walked towards him, featureless, expressionless like a zombie.

Through his pain-wracked brain Zales recognised the wire, the instrument, as a kind of gross garrotte.

A garrotte of razor wire with wooden handles that jumped and jostled as the man slid towards him.

Blood was caked over Zales’ face from the deep cut from a rifle butt a soldier had slammed into his head. One of his eyes was puffed and swollen, all but totally closed from the beating they’d given him after he and Talbot were seized in the street and dragged in here.

The tall man spoke. Zales saw the lips move, heard the words but the voice was hollow. No cadence, no emotion.

‘Your friend is a fool, American,’ the tall man said in English, an accent that spoke of English education. Not that Zales’ hearing could be trusted at this moment. One ear was filled with dried blood, the other half ripped away when he was dragged over jagged concrete chunks of rubble littering the streets from shattered buildings.

The tanks didn’t stop for buildings. They drove through them, crunching solid shops and homes into fragments as small as gravel.

Zales summoned up strength from somewhere.

He took the weight in his wrists and lashed out with his good right leg, kicking at the man, hoping to hit him in the testicles, riding too high, smacking him instead in the stomach.

Even so, it was force enough to make the man double over momentarily but in seconds he had straightened up, his hands stretching the wire, the blades rippling as the garrotte went taut.

It was at his throat, the blades nicking into his throat, fresh blood running down his naked body.

The civilian stepped back, breathed deeply and composed himself.

He nodded to a uniformed soldier nearby, another of the kontraktniki - contract soldiers hired as mercenaries to interrogate and kill.

‘General Krovotkin wants one of them alive, Nikolai,’ the gaunt civilian said, this time speaking in soft, sibilant Russian, but wheezing a little from the blow. ‘Cut him down and bring him over near the other one. Make him watch.’

Zales crumpled in a heap as the rope holding him to the beam was cut and he was dragged again through the rubble-strewn floor, the shattered leg bouncing over fallen stone and brickwork. Zales knew he must be screaming in pain but he couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t identify his own screams amid the thousands of others as the tanks continued their slaughter.

The kontraktniki called Nikolai pushed him onto a chair, leering in pleasure at Zales’ agony as the civilian stepped forward and leaned down to lift Zales’ chin.

‘Look at me, American,’ he hissed. ‘Look at me and your friend behind me. See what happens to fools who don’t answer the General’s questions.’

Zales lifted his eyes.

‘Fuck off,’ he whispered through swollen lips.

The civilian straightened up.

‘Illiterate pig,’ he laughed. There was no mirth in his voice. Only disgust. ‘I should have warned you I don’t tolerate gutter language. Your friend shares your vocabulary. A grave mistake.’

It happened so quickly Zales had no time to look away.

The man stepped behind James, his white gown flapping in the wind the movement created, looking eerily like a ghost as he whipped the garrotte around James’ neck and pulled it tight.

Zales saw James’ eyes bulging, his body twist as he tried to get away from the wire that was ripping into his throat. The wire ripped through the flesh, through the windpipe, through the neck bones. The blades sliced through like cheese wire. The head topped into the dirt and rubble of the floor.

First there was stunned shock. Then rage, uncontrollable rage took over. Impervious to the pain Zales stood up, flinging the kontraktniki to one side with a swing of his arm.

But even the one good leg was too weak to hold him up for more than a moment. He crashed to the floor, his hands thrashing, reaching. His fingers touched the rifle in the rubble where the soldier had dropped it but the kontraktniki was already struggling back onto his feet, reaching for the weapon, trying to grab it before Zales could.

Zales’ finger locked onto the trigger and he dragged it towards him.

Training told him to lift the weapon to his shoulder to aim. His brain told him there was no time. The soldier was too near. The pain was reasserting itself, consuming him. He smashed the rifle into the soldier’s face with all the strength he could muster. If he lived the soldier called Nikolai would never look the same again.

He swung back. The civilian’s face was only a blurry haze now, Zales’ eyes no longer able to focus but he knew the man was laughing at him. He could almost feel the sneer but the greyness was a mucous tide flowing over him, engulfing him.

No time to focus. No time to aim. Only time to kill.

He fired from the floor, hoping he was pointing at the civilian’s head.

But another kontraktniki was there, lifting his foot and the last thing Zales would see or feel in Chechnya was the heavy boot slamming into the side of his head.

Gratefully, he sank into blackness.

Chapter 2. New South Wales. June 2012.

It was hot inside the small room of the motel in Come by Chance and Chad Allis, lying on the bed, tossed around restlessly. Too many schooners of Tooheys earlier didn’t make for sound sleep but it was sufficient to put him out almost immediately his head touched the pillow after the bar closed for the night.

He shouldn’t have been drinking at all. He should have been in training but this time he wasn’t going to win. The African had the marathon all sewn up so why worry. The glory was in the competing, people said. Thing was, the only one’s who said that were armchair athletes, one’s who never competed at anything in their lives. That’s why Allis drank. Alcohol soothed the hurt of knowledge.

He also soothed it with the money he’d been given. A million dollars in your pocket does a lot to assuage the pain of deliberately losing, especially at his age when the endorsement money was going to the kids with good looks and old timers like him could see an end to the advertisers’ pay cheques looming. Not that there’d been very many. Marathon runners didn’t rate high on advertisers’ books, even during the Fun Runs. Even during the Olympics.

Take the money and run to the bar. That was his motto for 2012.

While he lay on his side it was fine but from to time he’d turn on his back and begin to snore. The snore would awaken him and he’d turn to the other side, then fall back into his drunken sleep again. Turning, tossing, moving. Restless.

Mosquitoes hummed around his face but he was impervious to their bites. The outback sun had turned his face to leather. Mosquitoes could find no sustenance there.

The bedrooms were in an annexe, running around three sides of the complex with a communal toilet located in the middle of the top leg. The buildings were old and in need of attention but Come by Chance wasn’t exactly on the package tour route and visitors to the motel were few and far between. The owner only kept one room in a constant state of readiness, mostly for use by local drovers passing out on pay night. That was the room closest to the toilet. Hardly anyone would use the toilet except in desperation. Red back spiders loved the toilets. No one wanted to sit down on a dunny in a drunken haze and get bitten on the arse by one of those.

It was winter in Australia but here on the fringes of the Outback it never got truly cold and Allis had opened the window to allow the pent up heat of the day to escape.

Now he was lying on the bed naked, his clothes in a heap on the floor where he’d dropped them.

The thump brought him instantly awake. He rolled over and began to sit up but it was already too late.

Ten seconds.

That was all it took to strike him in the face.

The snake on his bed struck again, and again. The experts would call it a ‘jab bite,’ the kind normally used to slow its prey, allowing the animal to crawl away, while the snake followed, knowing that the venom would work rapidly, until the target collapsed in a paralysed coma. Then it could be killed and ingested at leisure.

Sometimes, with small mammals, the snake would sink its six centimetre fangs into the flesh and hold on there, forcing the venom into the victim’s body, making certain it died. This was what it was doing now.

Allis flailed at it, trying to scream but it held onto his lower lip. His muscles were withering, he was breathing hard and choking. Still he swung at it, hitting it with his fists, grabbing it around its neck and trying to choke it or rip it away but it was so fast and too aggressive. Too late.

In his terror he fancied for a moment he could make out someone standing at the window. Standing. Watching. Allis tried to call him, ask him to help, but his voice box was already paralysed. No sound came. No help either.

The snake let go of the fang-hold and sat back momentarily in its loose coils, its head upright, nine to ten inches higher than the body, the huge black eyes gazing at him unblinking, its long head paler than the body in the moonlight streaming through the open window. It was waiting, if necessary, to strike again, but there was no need.

It slowly slid off the sheet and wriggled across to the window. The seven foot long snake slithered up over the ledge. Its back and upper sides and tail a blackish brown, the colouring of an adult, its underbelly yellowing, a dark orange rim around its eyes visible as it dropped onto the ground and slid away, looking for safety in any nearby animal burrow.

The tall gaunt man who had been standing by the window didn’t wait to see the snake leave. Didn’t wait to see the marathon runner vomiting on the floor where he’d fallen, his stomach retching, the muscles failing.

Chad Allis didn’t die quickly.

The Australian Taipan, the one that drovers sometimes called the Fierce Snake, is the deadliest land snake in the world, fifty times more toxic than the Indian cobra. Allis wasn’t a heavy-set man and he was fit, or had been until last night. He lasted nearly twenty minutes. Had there been anyone around able to administer an antidote Allis might have lived but there was no one.

Only the tall gaunt man and he had no interest in saving Allis.

The taipan, normally peaceful and preferring to hide from large predators including humans, was seeking safety. A rat hole would be ideal. He could kill the current occupant first as a bonus.

Ten seconds.

That was all it took to kill the first rat he found in its hole.

Then he ingested it and curled up inside the former occupant’s home to sleep before the heat of the sun began to blaze from the sky.

Levi Kersen didn’t wait to see the taipan slide away to its hole. A hundred yards from the motel, near the gully where he left his car, he took out his phone and called General Alexandr Krovotkin, formerly of the KGB and now an avtoritet, Commander of External Operations in The Brotherhood, the biggest, most powerful, most ruthless of the Russian Mafia gangs.

‘It’s done,’ Kersen said curtly.

‘New target.’ Krovotkin was equally brief. He disliked long telephone conversations. ‘Canterbury, New Zealand. Then Calcutta. Details being sent. Have a nice trip, Levi.’

Kersen put away his phone. It would take him at least ten hours to reach Sydney airport, probably more. And he hated Calcutta.

Chapter 3. Grand Bahama. Sunday, July 12th.

The awesome white delta-winged plane, looking as though it had been cloned from the pages of an encyclopaedia on Stealth aircraft, flashed over the Finnish tundra, twisting and rolling, sometimes silhouetted against the stark cerulean blue of the Arctic sky, sometimes barely visible against the low hills of the ground.

From time to time small icebergs flashed by but it was still the Arctic summer and the real shelves of ice lay a hundred miles to the North.

It soared and sometimes seemed to float but that was an optical illusion, caused by the lack of topographical features to measure against the small plane, flying at more than two hundred miles an hour, sometimes as low as fifteen feet above the ground.

It looped up to several thousand feet, dived back to ground level. It banked and veered.

Every time it was shown in full the five rings of the Olympic logo seemed to flash back a subliminal message of peace, harmony and international co-operation.

For fifteen minutes it jinked across the sky, sometimes seeming to soar into inner space, until finally it sank through the cloudless blue to a small runway levelled on the still-frozen soil and came to a halt.

It sighed back on its wheels and pneumatic legs, now stripped of its elegance, ugly like a graceless duckling instead of a swan. It was no more than an uninviting white bug on the ground. Only when a small Russian truck drove up alongside was anyone able to tell that this wasn’t a real plane at all. It stood no more than nine feet off the ground, perhaps no more than twenty feet across its wings.

Without any visible pilot.

Andrew Ballard stood at the microphone, basking in the thunderous applause as fifty sections of Cinerama screen folded silently into each other around one half of the ballroom, then sank crisply, efficiently into a column that retracted into the side of the wall. A panel, decorated in the same fashion as the walls, slid over it and no one could tell, without looking carefully that the gigantic screen had ever been there.

Ballard held up a hand to stay the clapping from the audience.

‘The master builders, with overall architecture and design, are American,’ he said. ‘The fuel system is German. The electronics are Japanese, the avionics Swedish. China developed the fibreglass wings and fuselage, wind tunnel testing was done in Switzerland. The flight control system is British, the flight testing performed in Russia and Finland where the film you’ve just seen was taken. The person who controls it - the equivalent of a pilot - was Canadian. Other engineering elements came from Norway, Spain, France, Australia and Poland. A true example of global co-operation in keeping with the Olympic ethos.’

A smaller screen dropped from behind the stage where the orchestra was waiting patiently and a photograph of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a UAV, flashed onto the screen.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ Ballard said, ‘I give you the "Spirit of Freedom," built by our Sentinel Foundation for the promotion of world peace.’

A new round of applause swept the room and again he waited for it to subside, stepping back momentarily from the microphone, beaming at the tables beyond him and the guests he couldn’t see in the facing glare of the spotlights.

‘On July 27th I’ll be in London to commence the building of our latest casino on a derelict site in North East London,’ he said, when they were silent again. ‘I promise you it will be the finest casino in the world, greater than the Venetian in Las Vegas and a lasting symbol of the harmony and prosperity the London Games will bring to everyone.’

He gazed around the room. Ballard had long since perfected the art of holding an audience; subtle silences, a strong voice when it was needed, soft at others as if the cadence play on noises were part of poetry. He also knew how to be short and dramatic.

‘For the four weeks of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Spirit will be taken from place to place around Britain, giving demonstrations at airfields outside London with the permission of the British authorities. At every airport we shall have giant screens for people to continue to watch the activities at the Games in London, and smaller screens where people can see our online gaming system at work. They’ll be able to listen to commentators around the world, from independent state broadcasting companies in the five official Olympic languages. They’ll have all the facts on the state of the athletes competing and place their wagers without being pressured by anything but their own judgment. A little bit of business, a little bit of fun, in the right proportions.’

He smiled broadly.

‘Then we have a surprise for you.’ He beamed to make certain that what he would now say was half intended as a joke. ‘The FBI agents sitting at the bar near the entrance door behind you, may not believe it, but I’m a patriot. I can’t yet go back to my homeland because of outdated Washington laws that prevent me doing my business in America. Those laws were passed in the 1920’to thwart the Al Capones of history. They still apply so I can’t be there but my heart stays in the United States, in Nevada where I was born. Which is why, after the Olympics, "Spirit" will be given a change of clothes, decked in the livery of the United States and transferred to Las Vegas. From there it will give shows around the nation but particularly in Nevada in support of Jake Zales, a member of the Nevada National Assembly who is also directing our plan to win the Olympics for Las Vegas in 2024 or 2028.’

Ballard waved his hand and the spotlight flashed to the side of the stage where Zales was sitting at a table with Sheryl Underlane.

Awkwardly Zales stood up at Ballard’s beckoning then quickly sat down again.

There was a polite round of applause and Ballard silenced it again.

‘Assemblyman Zales is not only a leading figure in the unofficial Las Vegas Olympic bid,’ he said. ‘He’s a renowned political fighter in the name of oppressed peoples everywhere. In London he’ll be speaking on behalf of the Circassians who’s ancestors were almost wiped out in a Russian genocide 150 years ago and now want nothing more than to have their own race, their own identity, their own language and tradition of living in peace and harmony with their neighbours in the Greater Caucasus. It’s an ideal we at Sentinel support. That’s why our Foundation will be flying Spirit in Nevada from October onwards in support of the Assemblyman’s bid to become the next Governor of Nevada. In time, we believe his honesty, his integrity, his passion for the freedom of the ordinary people of the world will carry him where he deserves to be. Ladies and Gentlemen, Jake Zales, future President of the United States of America!’

Chapter 4. Lucaya Beach.

‘What the hell was all that about!’ Zales fumed as Ballard, dressed in a white tuxedo that stood out in the sea of black suits surrounding him, moved with agility around the tables in the South Beach Room at his hotel-casino. ‘I haven’t even decided to run for Governor yet and if I did I wouldn’t want you announcing it for me!’

‘Calm down, Governor.’ Ballard wore an easy grin, a fake bonhomie that went with his bulky frame. ‘No one’s interested in you yet. They only want to eat my food and drink, have a party, screw around, do a little private business. Ten minutes from now they won’t even remember your name. All they’ll remember are Sheryl’s diamonds.’

The necklace, earrings and bracelets on Underlane’s wrists sparkled under the gleam from the overhead lights. Everyone had heard of the Underlane diamonds, and they hadn’t been seen in public for two years, since her late husband died. They were on display now because this was a charity event to raise funds for the US Paralympics Team. That had been a major part of the charity work she’d done when her husband was the vice President of the US Olympic Committee. Other than that, her life was devoted to her fine Virginia stud in the Hunt Country outside Washington DC, where the bloodlines went back to the earliest days of settlement in the Americas.

‘I’m not the damn Governor and with you shouting off your loud mouth to the world I’m not likely to be.’ Zales was fuming with anger. He and Sheryl had talked about his political ambition but it had never widened into the public domain. Given Zales’ position as a member of the Nevada Gaming Commission, the last thing he wanted was to be so publicly backed by the figurehead of one of the world’s wealthiest Internet gambling empires. The Commission and Ballard might see eye to eye on aspects of gambling but there could easily be questions of conflict of interests, given that Nevada’s income devolved almost entirely from gambling and gold.

‘Sure,’ said Ballard, dismissing it immediately. He turned to Underlane. ‘Looking forward to Connick, Sheryl?’

‘His style’s a product of your youth, Andrew, not mine,’ she said offhandedly.

Ballard was paying the bill and his musical taste ran to retro rather than rap, reggae or any brand of rock. Had it been possible he’d have had Sinatra, perhaps with backing from Harry James or Tommy Dorsey, even Woody Herman’s Young Thundering Herd as they were when they played with him on a comeback event at Madison Square Garden.

But Sinatra was gone and so was all of what Ballard considered the good music: gone along with Ella, and Sammy Davis Jnr, Crosby and Martin. Instead he had Harry Connick Jnr, a passable substitute for Sinatra but, even to Ballard’s mind, no match for the master. Nonetheless people at the tables seemed to be eagerly waiting for him to appear, especially the older ones with fat chequebooks and a smile for the cameramen from the glossy magazines roving the floor for high profile targets.

Ballard held out a hand to Zales. ‘I should have talked to you before I made that announcement,’ he said. It was as much an apology as Ballard ever gave. ‘I still think the failure to repeal the Wire Act is reining in American business but that’s for Washington to legislate, not the State of Nevada.’

Zales took the hand. He didn’t like Ballard but early in his political career he’d been taught that likes and dislikes were immaterial, courting campaign money and votes were the things that initially mattered. He glanced across at the bar in the distance, and the people sitting there, mostly journalists watching the wealthy at the tables.

‘Is that who you meant by the FBI?’ He indicated a big man in an ordinary suit, sitting alone at the end the bar.

Ballard didn’t turn around. He’d been told about the FBI agent as soon as the man arrived. He wouldn’t be the only one. There’d be two, maybe three more scattered around the room or outside on the main casino floor even though the Bureau had no jurisdiction outside the US. They wanted him in prison, so they assigned people to watch him. Besides, most of the American guests had high profiles and their security could be at risk.

‘What do you think of "Spirit?"’

‘It’s some plane,’ Zales admitted. ‘Looks like the Stealth fighter or a straight steal from the Dassault experimental unmanned demonstrator, the Taranis, but I’m impressed.’

Ballard grinned. ‘Between you and me we had some private French help.’

‘The Dassault cost $450 million they say. A lot of money for patriotic propaganda,’ Zales prodded.

‘It gets written off to the Sentinel Foundation.’ Ballard dismissed the cost without another thought. ‘Foundations propagating moral issues are a big political tool to get around federal or state election financing rules. You should be happy we’re putting it behind your political runs.’

‘I don’t have any runs yet, Ballard.’ Zales’ voice had gone hard again. ‘And if I do we’ll stick to the rules and not indulge in tricks to avoid them.’

‘You sound like that old idiot McCain in 2008. He accepted public funding and all he got was $84 million for his campaign. Chickenfeed, Zales and you know it. Obama raised everything privately and spent a billion. The left wing Foundations threw in millions more. The Sentinel Foundation could help Americans understand the real moral state of the nation, but we haven’t committed ourselves to it yet. It’s not cut and dried. We’ll run the figures, sound out the right people. Maybe we’ll do it, maybe not. If we do and it works, we’ll carry on. If not, development of "Spirit" is a tax loss but we’ll probably be able to use it to diversify into commercial unmanned aircraft uses.’

He paused, looking around the room as if searching for someone. Or maybe it was just a break in the space on the dance floor.

‘Spirit can do unmanned photography, deliver unmanned high-priority parcels. Hell, the military can hire her to deliver bombs if they want,’ he said, shoving back his chair and standing up. ‘All they have to do is alter the configuration in the nose cone. Meanwhile the Foundation can use her to support your pet cause and stop the Winter Olympics being held in Russia next time. This Circassian, Chechen, Caucasus business. "Spirit" can reach a whole world, Zales, not just London and Nevada. That’s it for shop talk, though. Do you mind if I ask Sheryl for a dance?’

‘She’s her own woman,’ Zales replied. ‘She does what she wants, not what I tell her. I’m sorry if I was a bit sharp, Ballard. I don’t like those kind or surprises.’

He stood up, taking his weight on his walking stick, as Underlane shoved her chair back and took Ballard’s arm. Most of the male eyes on the floor followed her.

Chapter 5. Big Sur, California.

It was dark and Jill Neville was feeling a little tired when she reached Big Sur and decided to pull over at a spot near the edge of the cliffs to have a coffee, maybe an hour’s break before she carried onto her parents’ home in San Francisco.

She watched the lights of another vehicle pull in behind her. The driver probably had the same thing in mind, she thought. The car had been behind her for some time but this was a main highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The traffic was light now, but had been heavy earlier with lots of cars following each other part of the way.

She thought no more of it and was reaching for the Thermos in the bag beside her, when she was aware of someone approaching. She could hear the sand at the edge of the cliff crackling a little through her open window.

She turned to see who it was.

A hand smashed out and hit her with the heel of a hand, driving her nose bone up into the brain. She was dead long before Kersen took out the hammer he’d bought in Los Angeles, opened the door and smashed it into the side of her head, crushing the skull, driving her already lifeless body towards the passenger seat until it was checked by the seat belt she still had strapped around her body.

He reached in and checked the pulse in her neck although it was unnecessary. It was clear she was dead. She couldn’t fail to be anything else given the shattered state of the skull.

Blood had splattered over the seats and facia