End Game

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jolaine put her Glock in the top drawer of the thin-walled faux-mahogany dresser.

The officer rapped again. “Ms. Bernard! Please!” His tone was harsher this time.

Jolaine looked at herself in the mirror. She saw nothing in the image that telegraphed the nightmare of the past few hours. All she saw was a young woman — an attractive one, she liked to think — who looked a little tired, but there was no tattoo on her forehead announcing that she’d killed people. Jolaine opened the door just as the cop was preparing to knock again. “Good lord, what is it?” she demanded as she pulled it open.

Outside, the officer who was doing the knocking stood off to the side. Another, with his hand resting casually on his sidearm, stood at a distance in the parking lot. Clearly, the agenda here was serious.

“Are you Marcia Bernard?” the cop asked.

With that question, she knew that the call had been placed by Hi-my-name-is-Carl, the only person in the world other that herself to know that she had an alias, let alone what it was.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“May we come in?” the cop asked as his partner moved closer. The partner’s hand never moved from his gun.

“I don’t understand,” Jolaine said. “Is there a problem?”

“I’d really prefer to talk inside,” the cop said. “No sense waking the entire complex.”

Jolaine’s heart and head raced together to figure out a plan. She stepped back from the door and ushered them inside.

“I’m Officer Bonds,” the first cop said. “This is Officer Medina. Is everything okay here?”

“Of course,” Jolaine said. “Why wouldn’t it be?” She played it as absurd, and hoped she hadn’t oversold it.

“Are you here alone?” Bonds asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m here with my little brother.”

“And where is he?”

“In the bathroom. Excuse me, Officer, but I’m not comfortable—”

The bathroom door opened, releasing a cloud of steam, and revealing Graham with wild wet hair and a white towel wrapped around his waist. “Hey Jolaine, did we bring—” He saw the cops. “Holy shit.”

“This is my brother, Tommy,” Jolaine said, suddenly aware that she hadn’t yet told Graham that he had an alias.

Graham said nothing, but his expression was an open confession to the Lincoln assassination.

“Who’s Jolaine?” Officer Medina asked. He stood in the doorway to the parking lot, blocking the only route of escape. He asked the question to Graham, and the boy still couldn’t find any words.

The cops’ eyes shifted in unison to Jolaine. “I am,” she said. She was winging it now.

Medina stayed focused on Graham. “And who are you? I mean really?”

“He’s Tommy Bernard,” Jolaine said. Her words clearly pissed off the cop, who was trying to get a rise out of the boy, but she had to get it out there if the kid was going to have a chance.

“I’m Tommy Bernard,” Graham said.

“Uh-huh,” Bonds said. “What’s going on here?”

“My brother and I are on a trip,” Jolaine said.

“Where to?” Medina asked.

“I don’t see where that’s any of your business,” Jolaine said. They’d crossed the line where she felt her best defense — maybe her only defense — would be a little offense.

“Why did you lie about your name?” Bonds said.

“Is that a crime?”

“It could be. Let me see some identification.”

As Jolaine fished through her pockets for the business-card folder she used to house her driver’s license and credit card, Medina said to Graham, “How about you? Got any ID?”

Graham shook his head. Jolaine could tell that his own fear was giving away to annoyance. “No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m fourteen and I just got out of the shower.”

“You got clothes in there?” Medina asked, craning his neck to see into the bathroom.

“Yeah.”

“Then go put some pants on,” Medina said. “But keep the door open.”

Graham started to retreat back into the bathroom, but then stopped and gave Medina wicked glare. “Wait, you perv. I’m not going to take a towel off so you can watch me naked.”

Medina’s ears grew red as Graham stepped back to his original spot.

Jolaine’s heart raced faster. She’d seen Graham after he’d crossed into high adolescent indignation, and it never made a situation better. Never. She pulled her driver’s license out of its pocket and held it by the edges so Bonds could read it.

When he reached for it, she pulled it away. “Look but don’t touch,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“This is my property. If I don’t give it to you, you can’t take it from me.” Across the room, Graham seemed to like that.

Bonds gave a derisive, condescending chuckle. “I don’t know what Internet law books you’ve been reading, but you have an obligation to provide identification to a sworn officer of the law.”

“I am providing identification,” she said. “I’m just not letting you have the card.” Her fear was that if she gave him her license, he would have leverage over her, tacit permission to stick around until he was damn good and ready to give it back.

“You’re a pretty smart-mouthed team, aren’t you?” Medina asked. His color still had not recovered from the accusation of pedophilia. On one level, Jolaine thought he had it coming — that was, after all what Hi-my-name-is-Carl had thought of her, thus launching this confrontation in the first place.

“What we are,” Jolaine said, “is a tired team. It’s been a long day, and frankly, I’m feeling a little harassed right now. I know what the desk clerk was thinking when I checked in, and I know why you’re here. And yes, frankly, it pisses me off.”

“That so?” Bonds asked. “Why are we here?”

“Because you think Tommy and I are having sex with each other.”

Graham’s reaction was instant, and straight from the heart. “What? Eew. That’s disgusting! Jesus, you are a perv.”

Hearing it said out loud made it seem even more disgusting, and just like that, Bonds’s discomfort became obvious.

“If you’re not, then our friend Carl up front is,” Jolaine said.

“How come you and your brother have different names?” Medina asked. From the way he leaned on the word, she could tell that he wasn’t yet buying.

“Different fathers,” she said. The explanation came so quickly that it made her proud.

“Where’s your luggage?” Medina made a show of scanning the tiny room. “I don’t see any suitcases.”

“Okay,” Graham said. “You got us. You want the truth? We were in this big shoot-out tonight where a lot of people were killed, and now international spies are chasing us and trying to kill us. That’s why we’re here. How’s that?”

Jolaine nearly dashed over to shut him up. This was it, the end of everything.

“Man, you really do have an attitude problem, don’t you?” Medina said. “I see punks like you every day when I put them in jail. What do you bet I’ll see you one day, too?”

Holy shit, they don’t believe the truth! Jolaine nearly laughed. “Come on, Officer,” she said. “He’s fourteen and he’s tired, and you guys are riding pretty hard. Cut him a break.” To Bonds, she said, “I don’t know what to tell you, other than to say that so far as we know, we’re not breaking any laws.”

Bonds’s eyes narrowed. “Are you two runaways?”

“I’m twenty-seven,” Jolaine said. “Who would I be running away from?”

Bonds turned to address Graham. “Are you okay, son? If there’s a problem, this is the time to tell me. No one can hurt you, I promise.”

Graham rolled his eyes. “Jesus,” he said, and he disappeared back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

“I get to be with that for five days,” Jolaine said. “Don’t you wish you were me?”

Bonds regarded her for a while longer, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You win. Sorry we bothered you.”

After they were gone and the door was closed, Jolaine wasn’t convinced they were really on their way. Finally, the cruiser backed out of its spot, and she could breathe again.

Morning came early.

All things considered, Jolaine decided it would be best if she left Graham in the room and shopped alone. It was just too damned hard to come up with an explanation for his near-nakedness. Having never bought clothes for an adolescent, she cursed herself for never having studied the labels in his clothes.

She had to guess on the sizes, but a clerk at the Walmart helped a lot. Turns out that at a certain age, all boys can fit into size medium T-shirts, and no boys would be caught in underwear that bore the word “briefs.” She could verify that one, thanks to the laundry duties that came with her contract with the Mitchells. With no idea of appropriate shoe size, she bought one pair each of medium and large flip-flops. That was all Graham wore this time of year anyway, and it seemed to her that his feet were growing even faster than his disproportionately long arms and legs. It was no wonder that he suffered so from teasing at the hands of the other boys in his school. She suspected that the teasing came from the girls as well.

Forty dollars later, she was back in the car, ready to return to the Hummingbird. Sarah’s last words haunted her.

Finish your mission.

Jolaine smacked the steering wheel. Goddammit, she hadn’t signed up for this. She hadn’t even applied for the job. The job had recruited her.

She’d just come back from her second tour as a civilian gunslinger in Afghanistan. The money was great, and the job was simple — until it wasn’t. Her responsibilities mostly involved personal security for Afghan muckety-mucks who were important enough to require bodyguards, but not quite important enough to have the best. Not that she wasn’t good at what she did — in fact, she considered herself to be damn good — but the outfit she worked for, Hydra Security, didn’t have the clout to get big-money contracts. As a result, she’d been stuck with old-school M4 rifles and M9 sidearms while the big boys got the fancier MP7s and much lighter body armor.

Jolaine had been shot at plenty in her two tours in Afghanistan, but the intended targets had always been the people she was supposed to protect. Her response had been to lay down cover fire — a blanket of bullets that was more intended to keep bad guys’ heads down than to kill identifiable targets — and to shove her protectees into their armored vehicles. The work was mentally engaging and exciting. And since she was still breathing — as were her clients — she liked to think of herself as pretty good at the job. When she was on her last break before her contract expired, she’d decided to sign on for another two years.

Then, three years ago, she was sitting in a Starbucks in Vienna, Virginia, enjoying a grande coffee and a blueberry muffin when a blond supermodel sat down at the table next to hers and made a point of staring at her. Jolaine tried to ignore her, but after ten minutes it became unbearable.

“Can I help you?’ Jolaine asked. At the time, she’d assumed that it was a lesbian come-on, and she’d girded herself for the confrontation.

“You’re Jolaine Cage, aren’t you?” the lady asked.

Jolaine’s protective shields shot up. “Who wants to know?”

The superhot blonde flashed a gold badge from the pocket of her slacks. “Can we take a walk?” she said.

Jolaine recognized the distinctive shape of the FBI shield. “Am I in trouble?”

The blonde smiled. “Not hardly. I just want to talk to you, and it’s too crowded in here.”

At the time — in the moment — Jolaine felt a surge of adrenaline. Within the community of freelance security folks, stories abounded of clandestine meetings in which operators were recruited to be Uncle Sam’s muscle. “Sure,” she said. Jolaine rose from her little table and started to walk away from her coffee.

“You’re probably going to want that,” the lady said, pointing to the paper cup.

Jolaine grabbed the cup by its insulating band and pulled it close to her body. “Where are we going?”

“Just out.”

They stepped out into chilly October sunshine. Traffic on Maple Avenue was heavy more or less all day, thanks to traffic lights on every block. At this hour, about eleven in the morning, it was as light as it was going to get.

“Let’s walk north,” the lady said.

Jolaine noted that the left turn out of the Starbucks led them toward CIA headquarters, six miles down the road. “I won’t get into a car,” she said.

The lady laughed. “This isn’t a rendition,” she said. She extended her hand. “My name is Maryanne Rhoades. I’m with the FBI.”

Jolaine shook her hand. “I got the FBI part in there. And you already know who I am.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why do you know who I am?”

“We’ve been watching you.”

A danger bell rang in Jolaine’s head. She stopped walking.

It took Maryanne a few steps to realize that she was alone, and she turned. “You look unnerved,” she said. “Don’t be. This is all good.”

“Then I think you should get to the good part,” Jolaine said.

Maryanne smirked, as if hearing a joke that was audible only to her. “Do you like working at Hydra Security?”

A second bell rang in harmony with the first. “That’s a question, not an answer,” she said.

Maryanne cocked her head. “I’m getting the vibe that you don’t trust me.”

“If you know what you claim to know, then you should understand why. Over on the dark side of the world, you guys don’t know what it means to play fair.”

Maryanne shrugged. “War is hell.”

“We’re done,” Jolaine said. She turned and started back toward the Starbucks. If this pinup bitch had been within a thousand miles of a shooting war, Jolaine would eat her own arm.

“Please stop,” Maryanne said.

Jolaine stopped but she didn’t turn.

“We want to hire you,” Maryanne said.

Now that got her attention. “Hire me as what?”

“A contractor,” Maryanne replied. “For personnel security.”

Jolaine turned and regarded the other woman. “And why does the FBI, with four point three bajillion agents, want to hire me as a contractor?”

Maryanne shrugged. “I told you. We’ve been watching you. We like what we see.”

They say that flattery will get you everywhere. While Jolaine was as vulnerable as the next girl, she also recognized the blowing of sunshine. “Not good enough,” she said. “If you were watching me, then you were watching others. And if you were watching others, you’d know that there are tons of people out there whose work is exemplary.”

The smirk didn’t fade. “Your attributes are special,” she said. When Jolaine didn’t rise to the bait, she clarified, “You’re a woman. This job is specifically for a woman.”

Jolaine’s imagination went right to a mission to sleep with the enemy, and she rejected it out of hand. “No,” she said. She started walking again.

“Dammit, Jolaine, will you quit doing that?”

She stopped and turned. “You’ve got two sentences to show your hand,” she declared.

“It’s a bodyguard gig,” Maryanne said. “For a young boy. The parents want the bodyguard to be a woman.”

And just like that, she was intrigued. She took a few steps closer. “Are we talking witness protection?”

Maryanne’s head bobbled noncommittally on her shoulders. “Not exactly, but that’s close.”

“What’s closer?”

Maryanne smiled. “For that, we have to keep walking.”

Jolaine approached, and then together they continued north. “Why is walking important?”

“Motion makes eavesdropping more difficult.”

They stopped for the light at Center Street.

“Who would be listening in?”

“In this town, anybody,” Maryanne said with a chuckle. With its proximity to CIA headquarters, sleepy little Vienna, Virginia, was one of the spookiest towns in the world. “In our case, it could be one of several parties. Unfortunately, at this juncture, I’m not at liberty to share that information with you.”

The light turned and they continued walking northward. “Makes it kind of hard to evaluate your offer.”

“I’m sure it does,” Maryanne confirmed, “but I’m also sure you can see the chicken-and-egg problem. Unless and until you’re on board, we can’t afford to share details. You know how this business works. Sometimes you say yes to the unknown and just hope that you’re not signing on for a suicide mission.”

Jolaine felt a chill. “I don’t do suicide missions. Let’s establish that up front.”

“Duly noted.”

“How much danger is this kid in?”

“I really don’t know,” Maryanne said. “His mother and father feel threatened. This is their demand — that the boy have protection.”

“So they’re working for you,” Jolaine said. “Why else would you be concerned?”

Maryanne said nothing.

Jolaine nearly apologized for wandering into territory that had already been declared off-limits. “Would the family be my responsibility, too? Would I be part of a larger team?”

They stopped on the sidewalk to allow three cars to exit the driveway for the Maple Inn, while two others entered the same lot. There were no better chili dogs in the world than those from the Maple Inn.

“No team,” Maryanne said. “Just you. You’ll be the body man for the boy — sorry, body girl. You’ll go where he goes, and take him to and from wherever that is. During the day, the mom and dad will fend for themselves however they intend to do that. We’ve paid for a good alarm system at the house, so at night, once the boy is tucked in, you’ll be more or less off-duty.”

“More or less?”

They started walking again. “You go where the kid goes. As long as he’s in motion, you’ll be in motion, too.”

“That’s a lot for one person,” Jolaine said. “When I pulled gigs like that over in Afghanistan, we had four-to six-person teams for ’round-the-clock coverage.”

“That’s interesting,” Maryanne said in a tone that made it clear how little she was interested. “You’re free to say no. Remember, though, you’re not going to have to worry about IEDs, and I’m predicting that the sniper risk is virtually nil. You won’t have to do advance work, and, frankly, there’s a whole world of honest local law enforcement to keep the technicals off the street.”

Jolaine recognized a “technical” as a rust-bucket pickup truck fitted with a machine gun and laughed in spite of herself. Point made and taken. Perhaps it was a waste to attempt to compare the two missions.

“How old is this boy?”

“Eleven.”

“Oh, God.”

“What’s wrong with eleven?” Maryanne asked. “There’s no butt-wiping involved.”

Jolaine said, “Eleven is all whiny insecurity and drama. I’m not sure I want to sign on for drama.”

Maryanne laughed, amused by whatever she saw in Jolaine’s face. “You won’t be his mother. You’ll be his protector.”

“Why on earth would the mother and father want a woman to be in charge of a developing hormone factory? I’d think they’d want a stronger hand.”

Maryanne stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, just in front of the town’s new war memorial. “I’ve met this kid. I’ve met the whole family. He’s… less than respectful of authority. I believe their thinking is that a male bodyguard would just not work.”

“So, I would be his mother.”

“Only if you let that happen. Like I said, I know this family. They’re not bad people. Mom and Dad don’t have a real strong hand on the parenting tiller, but Graham is basically a good kid.” She blinked as she let his name slip.

Jolaine felt a rush as she heard the mistake, but right away wondered if Maryanne had let it slip on purpose to make Jolaine feel a victory. This was precisely the kind of second-guessing and mistrust that made Jolaine hate so much of the security industry.

Maryanne sensed that something was wrong, and gestured to the benches in the sun on the far side of the memorial. “Let’s take a seat,” she said. She led the way past the granite disk that praised “those who served our country” and past the poles that flew the flags of the United States, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Town of Vienna. This was a slice of tranquility in the midst of commuter chaos.

Maryanne sat on the north end of the bench and waited for Jolaine to help herself to the other seat. Jolaine sat sideways, her left calf tucked under her right thigh.

“Talk to me,” Maryanne said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Jolaine steeled herself. Should she open up and tell the truth, or should she play the same game she suspected that Maryanne was playing?

“I’m thinking that this is coming out of nowhere,” Jolaine said. “I’m thinking that I don’t know you from Adam, and that this is a bizarre assignment. I think that you’re holding out important details, and that those details define the reason why you’re coming to me when the FBI is fat with salaried, career agents. Then, when thinking about those assets that you’re choosing not to use, I begin to think you’re here because I’m considered expendable.”

Maryanne gave her a long, hard look. “How old are you?”

“You already know that,” Jolaine said. “I suspect that you know just about everything about me. And the fact that you just asked that question does nothing to make me feel better.”

“The question was more rhetorical than real,” Maryanne said. “I’m just amazed that you can be burdened with so much cynicism when you’re only twenty-four years old.”

“Cynicism is born of experience,” Jolaine said. “As you so eloquently said, war is hell. Remember, I’ve done two tours soldiering as a non-soldier. I’ve seen what happens to careers and futures after contractors have done their jobs exactly as they’d been instructed, only to have official Washington shove a knife in their backs as soon as something goes a little wrong. I don’t want to be one of those people.”

“You’re in the United States now, not in Afghanistan. The rules are different here.”

Jolaine waited for more.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Maryanne said. “In broad strokes. Do you know what a double agent is?”

“A spy.”

“A very special kind of spy. In this case, a man whose foreign bosses think he’s spying on us when in fact he’s providing information to us about the other guy.”

“I assume we’re talking about the father now?” Jolaine asked.

“Exactly.”

“And one of his rules for helping you is that his son be protected from retaliation.”

“Correct.”

Jolaine wasn’t buying. It didn’t all add up yet. “This circles back to my previous question,” she said. “Why just the boy? Why not the whole family?”

“Because the boy — Graham — is the best leverage point. The family and the FBI both agree that if the bad guys discover that they’ve been betrayed, they’ll just kill Mom and Dad outright. There’d be no reason to do otherwise. But if the bad guys only suspect that they’ve been betrayed…”

Jolaine finished the thought for her: “They could kidnap the boy and use him as leverage to make sure.”

“Yes.”

“And my job is to make sure that they can’t get close enough to make that happen.”

“Right.”

“By myself. How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

Maryanne pressed her lips together. “There are a couple of moving parts here,” she said. “The first is what we just discussed. The second is the fact that Graham doesn’t know about any of his parents’ behavior. They don’t want him to know — another condition of moving forward.”

Jolaine scowled. “Then how are you going to explain the lady with the gun going to school with him?”

“We’ll create a cover story. The nature of his father’s work is sensitive — that’s true, by the way. That’s why we’re working with him and why the bad guys want information from him. We’ll tell Graham that the extra security is just an abundance of caution.”

It still sounded like a lonesome loser of an assignment to Jolaine. She waited for more.

“Which brings me to the final set of moving parts,” Maryanne said. “I believe that this whole exercise truly is one of abundant caution. Overkill caution. I think the danger involved is miniscule.”

“That’s abundantly dismissive,” Jolaine observed. “Especially from the vantage point of one who will not be in the crosshairs if things go bad.”

Maryanne shrugged. “What can I say? That’s the nature of the job. We’ll make sure you’re well armed and well trained. There will be communications protocols in place. In addition to your salary, we’ll also pay for you to finish your degree.”

Jolaine laughed. That last part came out of nowhere. “My degree? When would I have time to pursue that while working twenty-four seven?”

“You’ll be staying at the house,” Maryanne said, the very essence of reason. “You can take online courses during the nighttime hours.”

Jolaine couldn’t see that working out, but she supposed it was a nice benefit to offer. She fell quiet.

“Look,” Maryanne said. “We know what you did for the Azizi family while you were working protection for them.”

Jolaine felt something stir in her belly. Was it possible that she was about to be arrested after all? “I don’t know—”

“It’s okay,” Maryanne assured. “You’re not in trouble for that. You just did your job.”

Toward the end of her most recent tour, Jolaine and her team had been escorting Behnam Azizi and his two children, eleven-year-old Afshoon and her nine-year-old brother, Fahran, from their armored SUV into a local coffee shop when a car erupted in an enormous fireball less than a hundred feet away, launching shrapnel like hundreds of bullets toward every compass point. Knocked down by the pressure wave, Jolaine rolled back to her feet, scooped the Azizi children into her arms, and ran. She’d assumed — correctly — that the bomb was an attempt to assassinate Behnam Azizi, and she wanted the children as far away from any ensuing gunfight as possible.

When it was all over, Behnam Azizi and three Taliban gunmen were dead — along with eight civilians who just happened to be on the street when the bomb detonated. Some of the locals who’d seen Jolaine running away with the panicked children had assumed that she was kidnapping them. Her teammates had assumed that she’d turned cowardly and fled the gunfight. Both assumptions led to her being prematurely rotated out of Afghanistan.

“Your instinct was to save the children,” Maryanne said. “The instinct of the penis possessors on your team was to stand and fight. Your approach is more compatible with the job we need done.”

And so, after some negotiation on pay, Jolaine accepted the offer.

Reflecting back on that conversation, and the training that followed, Jolaine remained stunned by the degree to which everything that could have gone wrong did.

If the Mitchells were so damned important, why didn’t they have a security detail of their own? And what could they possibly know that could justify this kind of carnage?

Once she started down this road of inquiry, the questions wouldn’t stop. If Maryanne — Jolaine’s only lifeline in all of this — was so securely on top of all that was happening, where was her warning to the family when everything was going to hell? Where was her phone call, or her FBI SWAT team? Why did the FBI seem to care so little about things alleged to be so important?

Who was the wounded little man who stumbled through the front door in the opening moments of this nightmare? Clearly, that goddamn code was something that the good guys wanted and the bad guys wanted them not to have. Those numbers were the key to everything. And now that Graham had seen it, it was imprinted forever. Sarah had deliberately pulled her son into the kill circle. Why would she do that?

Jolaine had to get back to Graham. It was entirely possible — maybe even likely — that he was awake by now. Despite the note she’d left him and his boisterous declarations of independence, it wouldn’t take long for him to feel abandoned. Nothing good could follow from that.