Nick struggled to free himself, driving uppercuts into Drake’s ribs, but his teammate only grunted and tightened his iron grip.
“He’s gone, boss,” wheezed Drake, clearly pained by the blows. “Come on. Pull it together.”
After a few seconds, Nick stopped swinging and Drake relaxed his grip. Nick jerked himself free. He let out an angry scream that echoed in the chamber. “Don’t you get it? I can’t beat him. This game ends with me dead. There’s no other outcome, and anyone who stands with me is a target.” He pressed his phone into Drake’s face to show him the list of messages from the chess app. “First Quinn, then Scott, and now Rami. Kattan has anticipated every move.” He shook his head. “No, he’s shaping the moves, working me like a puppet. This whole thing is just another game of chess to him, and he’s picking off my pieces one by one.”
Nick sat down on the steps and hung his head, lowering his voice. “Go home. Or go see your cousins in California, I don’t care. Just get away from me. If you don’t, you will be the next piece to fall, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
Drake sat down next to his teammate. He leaned back and rested his elbows on the steps. “You done?”
Nick breathed heavily for a few moments and then leaned back too, tilting his head back into the light that tumbled down the stairs from the church above. “Yeah, I’m done.”
During their few minutes in the subterranean chamber, Nick’s eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. He glanced around. Long shelves were carved out of the far wall and the wall to their right, and each shelf held a stone coffin. This was a crypt, beneath an old church in the heart of London. A coffin on the far wall had shifted when Drake bumped into it, likely the only action the corpse had seen for centuries.
“How did he do it?” asked Drake, staring up at the ceiling. “I mean, I get that he used the knife to get us to Ankara, and he lured us to Paternoster Square with the security cams, but the mosque was our idea. How did he know we were going to be there?”
Nick didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then he turned and looked at his friend. “You ever hear of Dynamic Evaluation Lookahead?”
Drake shook his head. “Sounds complicated.”
“It’s not. We all use it. DEL is our ability to predict outcomes, anything from catching a pop fly to knowing it’s a bad idea to tell a girl that her butt looks big in those jeans.”
Drake smiled to see Nick’s sense of humor returning. “And chess,” he offered.
Nick sat up and let out a long breath. “Right. Chess. That’s the most common example. People with a natural ability to see outcomes tend to be good at chess. A grand master may be one person in every five million. Then you’ve got your top quarterbacks and your superinvestors. Now we’re talking one person in a hundred million. The top day traders in that group can see complex outcomes hours in advance.”
“Hours?” said Drake. “Kattan had our moves laid out days in advance. How many people can do that?”
Nick closed his eyes. “One person in a billion — one in two billion. Something like this has never been documented. I think Masih Kattan can predict outcomes on a level the world has never seen.”
“So you really can’t beat him.”
“No, I can’t.” Nick settled back and looked up into the light again. “But I still have to try.”
CHAPTER 60
Samir Abbas slowed his aging Chevy delivery truck to a stop on a snow-packed side road, hidden in the trees off Canadian Route 15. He let the motor idle, kept the doors locked, and did not turn off the headlights. This seemed an especially creepy spot to meet his cargo, but under the circumstances he could see why it was necessary.
Sammy’s Vegetables — that’s what it said on the side of the truck — usually dealt in peppers, tomatoes, and squash of several types. Usually. On this trip up to Montreal, Samir had already delivered his cargo of fresh produce to the small groceries on his docket. At this point he would normally return to his greenhouse in Warrensburg, New York, with an empty truck, but not today. On this trip, Samir would bring something back across the border.
The imam had made it clear that this favor constituted a holy deed of charity — a valuable commodity for an imperfect Muslim. At sixty-one, Samir had never made the hajj, and he could not fathom how he would meet this obligation before he died. How many vegetable farmers could afford to go all the way to Mecca? Without the hajj, and with a less-than-ideal record of jum’ah prayer at the mosque, where did that leave him on Allah’s scales? Certainly, helping a young student at the behest of his imam might tip the balance in his favor.
Samir jumped at the startling sound of a fist pounding on his passenger door. He clutched his chest and leaned over to peer out the window. The face that stared back at him through the glass looked innocent enough, and young. The kid could not have been more than twenty, wearing a parka that dwarfed his stick-figure neck, and blue jeans that hung from his waist like curtains.
Samir pushed open the door and smiled. “You must be Mahmoud.” He held out a hand to help the young man climb into the cab. “And you must be freezing.”
“Shukran jazilan,” said Mahmoud, climbing up and setting his backpack on the floor. He pulled the passenger door closed and rubbed his hands together in front of the heating vent. “Before this trip, I had never left Egypt. I never imagined such a cold.”
Samir glanced over at Mahmoud’s bare hands and down at his soaked tennis shoes. He suddenly worried that this cargo might not survive the journey south. He pulled off his gloves and pressed them into the young man’s hands. “You are underdressed. You will need these. I would give you my boots but I must get out at the border, and how would that look? Me in my socks?” He tilted his head back toward the box trailer. “You must make the trip back there. The border guards that work the graveyard shift know me well, and they no longer bother to ask me for identification, but they would certainly ask for yours.”
After Mahmoud thawed out a bit, Samir led him to the back. He eyed the backpack slung over Mahmoud’s shoulder. “Is that all you’ve brought for a new life in America?”
“I have family in New York. They will provide all that I need. Insha’Allah.”
“Insha’Allah,” agreed Samir.
Mahmoud shifted his feet on the packed snow as Samir unlocked the roller door. “What if the border guards ask to look in the back?”
“They won’t.” Samir raised the door halfway and shined a flashlight into the cargo space. There was a stack of blue plastic crates at the front end. “If they do, just hide behind those. There are blankets as well. Wrap yourself up.” He shined the flashlight on Mahmoud’s feet and chuckled. “And when you are settled, take off those shoes. Better to wrap your feet in a blanket than leave them soaking in ice water.”
As Mahmoud climbed into the back, his parka rode up, exposing the black grip of a compact automatic tucked into his waistband.
Samir’s heart skipped a beat. He saw the officers who manned the border station more often than he saw his cousins in Albany. They were practically family. What fool had given this child a gun? “Please,” he said, trying not to let on that he had seen the weapon. “Stay calm when we reach the border. As I said, they will not check in here.”
Mahmoud turned to face him and set his bag down behind the crates. In the half light at the edge of the flashlight’s beam, the boy’s face looked much older than it had before. “Insha’Allah,” he said.