The Zero Game

“You got a deal. Even I’ll come back to Washington for that one.”

“Oh, so now you’re leaving us all behind? What’re you gonna do – write a book? Join the law practice with your guy Dan? Or just kick back on a beach somewhere like at the end of all those other thrillers?”

“I don’t know… I was thinking of just heading home for a bit.”

“I love it – small town boy goes home… they give you the victory parade… everyone chows on apple pie…”

“No, not Pennsylvania,” I say. For the better part of a decade, I’ve been convinced that success in the big leagues would somehow bury my past. The only thing it buried was me. “I was actually thinking about staying around here. Dan said there’s a junior high school in Baltimore that could use a good civics teacher.”

“Hold on a second… you’re gonna teach?”

“And that’s so bad?”

She thinks about it a moment. A week ago, like any other page, she would’ve said there were bigger things to do with my life. Now we both know better. Her smile is huge. “Actually, that sounds perfect.”

“Thank you, Viv.”

“Though you know those kids’ll eat you alive.”

I grin. “I hope so.”

“Miss Parker…!” her lawyer bellows for the last time.

“Be right there… Listen, I should run,” she tells me, offering a quick hug. As she wraps her arms around me, I can feel her ice pack on my back. She squeezes so tight, my arm starts to hurt. It doesn’t matter. The hug’s worth every second.

“Knock ’em dead, Viv.”

“Who, my parents?”

“No… the world.”

She pulls away with that same toothy grin she had when we first met.

“Y’know, Harris… when you originally asked me for help… I had such a crush on you.”

“And now?”

“Now… I don’t know,” she teases. “I kinda think I should get a suit that fits.” Walking backwards up the hallway, she adds, “Meanwhile, know what the best part of being a teacher is?”

“What?”

“The annual class trip to Washington.”

This time, I’m the one with the toothy grin.

“Y’like that, don’t you, King Midas?” she adds.

Turning around, she puts her back to me and heads for her lawyer. “I’m serious about that chief of staff job, Harold,” she calls out as her voice echoes down the long hallway. “Only eighteen years until I reach the age requirement. I’ll expect you there bright and early.”

“Whatever you say, Madame President. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

83

London

“HAVE A NICE EVENING, Mr. Sauls,” the driver said as he opened the back door of the black Jaguar and held an umbrella over his boss’s head.

“You, too, Ethan,” Sauls replied, climbing out of the car and heading to the front door of the exclusive six-story apartment building on central London’s Park Lane. Inside, a doorman behind a burled-walnut welcoming desk waved hello and handed Sauls a short stack of mail. Getting on the elevator, Sauls spent the rest of the ride flipping through the usual assortment of bills and solicitations.

By the time he stepped into his well-appointed apartment, he’d already picked through the junk mail, which he quickly tossed in a ceramic trashcan just beside the antique leather-top secretary where he threw his keys. Heading over to the hall closet, he hung his gray cashmere overcoat on a cherry-wood hanger. Passing through the living room, he flipped a switch, and recessed lights glowed to life above the built-in bookcases that lined the left side of the room.

Eventually making his way to the kitchen and breakfast nook that overlooked Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, Sauls went straight for the shiny, black-paneled refrigerator, where he could see his own reflection in the door as he approached. Grabbing a glass from the counter, he pulled the fridge open and poured himself some cranberry juice. As the door slapped shut, he was once again staring at his own reflection in the refrigerator door – but this time, there was someone standing behind him.

“Nice address,” Janos said.

“Nnnnuh!” Sauls blurted, spinning around so fast he almost dropped his glass.

“Don’t scare me like that!” Sauls shouted, clutching his chest and setting the glass on the counter. “God… I thought you were dead!”

“Why would you think that?” Janos asked as he stepped in closer, one hand stuffed into the pocket of his black overcoat, the other clenching the brushed-metal tip of an aluminum cane. He lifted his chin a bit, highlighting the cuts and bruises along his face – especially where the bones were crushed in his cheek. His left eye was cherry bloodshot, a fresh scar was stitched across his chin, and his left femur was shattered into so many pieces, they had to insert a titanium rod into his leg to stabilize the bones and keep the muscles and ligaments from being a flaccid sack of blood and tissue. Three inches down, the only things holding his knee together were the Erector Set pins that ran through his skin and straight into the fragments of bone. The fall was worse than he’d ever let on.