Byer isn't someone who gets summoned. It takes a while for him to appear; but when he enters, Nicky shivers.
He is boyish-looking, with dark hair and clear blue eyes. The first impression of good looks gives way the longer one spends in his company; the handsomeness cannot hide the intrinsic danger that clings to the man.
He looks normal. He looks like your neighbor, the guy you work with, the dad picking up his kids from the school line, the guy whose profile you single out; he's Everyman. And that is the most frightening thing of all because eventually it seeps into your consciousness that Byer is basalt; inhuman, precise, a machine, built for one purpose alone: to bend worlds to his will, to complete the mission to which he has been entrusted. He is a zealot, a true believer, a Patriot with a capital "P."
This is the man whose decisions have ended thousands of lives. Not tens or hundreds. There are villages from Somalia to Bosnia that have felt his wrath. There are men and women whose decisions drew his notice and who are now dead. She knows about a village in Afghanistan where there were charred bodies too small to be anything but children. Everyone knows about the execution of a traitor in the Treadstone office in full view of a roomful of other agents. Agents who'd held their screams as blood and brain matter had drenched them. And Maggie…Maggie.
Nicky thinks of Byer as Solomon: judge, jury, executioner.
He glances at the board, then takes the seat recently occupied by his aides. Byer doesn't ask her what she wants. It's beneath him. What she wants is immaterial; she has something he needs and he's here to retrieve it.
"One game," says Nicky. "I win, we're out. You win, I tell you why Bourne fell apart."
Byer studies her. For a few quiet moments, there is nothing in the room but their breathing.
"Fucking Conklin," he says without heat, and pushes his king's pawn forward to block hers. "You tell me what happened regardless."
Nicky brings her knight out to f3 and Byer advances his queen's pawn one square. Nicky's answer is to move her own queen's pawn to d4. Byer slides his bishop to g4, threatening her knight at f3.
Nicky's pawn takes the pawn at e5 and Byers follows through on his threat by taking the knight at f3 with his bishop, leaving her queen exposed.
Nicky's brows raise. She snaps up his bishop with her queen. He retaliates by taking her pawn at e5.
Byer cocks a brow. "We."
"Me. Cross. Dr. Shearing." She pauses. "Bourne."
Byer chuckles. He doesn't even try to humor her.
Nicky's bishop moves out to c4. Byer brings his knight to f6 and Nicky moves her queen left to b3. Byer's black queen enters the game at e7.
"Everyone thinks so highly of the queen," Byer says pleasantly, his finger lingering on his queen. "I think she's a chaotic bitch. Kings are worse. They're limited, weak, with no foresight or real power." He taps his knight gently. "Knights, though. There's a long history of men on horse advancing the causes of kings and queens."
"Push an agenda," Nicky interjects. "Sin eater."
His eyes are hard, the slash of a mouth a rigid line. "That's right."
Nicky's other knight jumps to c3 and Byer's black pawn comes out to c6. This is the notation of their play:
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 Bg4
4. dxe5 Bxf3
5. Qxf3 dxe5
6. Bc4 Nf6
7. Qb3 Qe7
8. Nc3 c6
Nicky eyes his black pawn. She moves a bishop to g5. Another black pawn enters the fray, pausing at b5.
"Everyone has a role. Even sacrificial material," he says, tapping the pawn. "Especially cheap material."
Pawns are only worth a point each in the game.
"There are more of them," continues Byer. "But intrinsically, they're fodder, blocking and tackling, setting up the more powerful pieces for play."
Nicky ignores him, takes the pawn he just moved with her knight.
"They have a purpose. Once they've fulfilled it, they're off the board," Byer finishes. His other pawn slides diagonally to take that knight. "They're dead."
Nicky moves her bishop and takes that same knight at b5. "Check," she grinds out.
He glances at the board, smiles. Nicky marvels how the gesture lacks anything resembling amusement.
"You're already dead, Parsons."
Cross moves like a dancer, his kick catching his assailant in the throat. The agent drops, hands to his throat, already dead before he hits the ground because Cross double-taps the man, the silencer muting the sounds of a bullet in the chest and one to the agent's forehead. Another agent was rushing forward when his compatriot went down, and slaps Cross' gun away. He engages Cross in a flurry of swift kicks, punches and leg sweeps.
Marta can't observe too carefully: she's on the ground, wrestling with the third agent for possession of the gun she'd taken earlier. She is struggling, nearly on top of him, both hands gripping the gun that he's trying to turn toward her. Marta knows she can't win with brute strength; but Aaron has trained her. She drops her hands and smashes her fists into the agent's face. He howls in pain and rage, and Marta rolls off him, crawling swiftly toward the fight that Aaron is winning.
Cross' discarded gun is in her hands and in the time it takes for her adversary to roll over, two shots to his chest end him. She's turning to help Aaron, but he doesn't need her help. He's letting go of a limp body.
Three men lie dead on the ground. One has a broken neck; the other two lay in pools of blood.
Aaron holds out a hand. Marta takes it. They're winded, bruised and their nerves are screaming; but Marta sees the spark of pride in his eyes, the satisfaction that she can hold her own. Her earlier nausea at knifing the agent gives way to a curious feeling, a suspension of horror, as if killing has become a normalcy.
They move quickly in the night, maintaining an urgent silence. Her blood is pounding, her breath is hard. It never ends; there are always more agents to take the place of the ones they fell.
They backtrack onto Luisenstraße, then go over to Schiffbauderdamm again, hurrying past the utilitarian Reuters building until they get to a cheery yellow edifice. The doors and windows on the ground floor are picked out in warm, inviting woods. Aaron pulls her tight against him as he guides her to an alcove right past the Zimt & Zucker Kaffeehaus. He unlocks the double doors and ushers her inside a residential foyer.
Marta follows him up five flights of stairs until they come to one of the non-descript doors on the floor. Cross knocks, his pattern seemingly random – but Marta guesses it's a specific series of raps. A moment later, the door opens.
Marta gasps.
A boy who can't be more than seventeen stares back at her, spiky black hair shoved away from his thin, angular face. Dark blue eyes peer out from behind long lashes. He's taller than her but he's little more than a child, his body lanky, awkward, gangly.
"Oh my God," Marta exclaims in horror. "He's a baby."
The baby looks offended and bursts out with a flurry of German vulgarities. Cross snaps at him in the same language before turning back to Marta.
"You graduated with honors in biochemistry and neurochemistry when you were little more than his age."
He pushes her through the door and the boy closes the door with a hard slam.
Cross introduces them off-handedly. "Marta, Christian Dassault. Christian, Marta."
"We're in some deep shit right now since you had to go rescue her," interrupts the boy in heavily accented English as Marta looks around.
The room is an industrial open space, threadbare and spartan. A long wall opposite the door is lined with windows, so light fills the space, but they are frosted to ensure total privacy – or secrecy. Half the room is a command center of monitors, servers, and machinery, all of it bound by a rat's nest of multi-colored cords and wires, tables and chairs; the other half comprises a mean kitchenette in the far corner and a battered couch in front of which is a surprisingly large, silent flat screen TV. Several Picture-in-Picture windows line the screen's lower half, set on satellite stations from around the world.
"We need to work," the boy tells Cross. Aaron squeezes her shoulder and pushes her toward the couch. The boy settles himself into an Aeron chair at the center of that post. Cross pulls up a seat in front of a monitor.
Marta's eyes widen as she watches the scene unfolding on the main screen: a shaky smartphone video of Nicky Parsons fighting Treadstone agents.
Then
Nicky leans over the toilet and vomits. Her entire body shakes, her mind unable to assimilate what she just witnessed.
In the stall next to her, she hears quiet weeping.
She's too shaken to comfort her colleague.
Goddammit, get your shit together and get back in that room before they notice you've gone, she admonishes herself.
"Oh God, oh my God," moans the woman in the next stall.
"Shut up, Christine," Nicky growls. "Shut up."
It makes Christine cry harder but Nicky's not in the mood or the position to offer kindness. At the sink, she rinses out her mouth with water. She stares at herself in the mirror, hating the wounded expression on her face, the pupils dilated with shock. Gritting her teeth, she forces her inhalations and exhalations back into a normal semblance of breathing and grabs her cheeks with hard hands, squeezing until she can feel pain, and splotches of color returns to them.
Christine's sobs have given way to hiccups and Nicky straightens. "You're already dead, Christine."
She walks out of the bathroom, heedless to Christine's fresh wails.
Now
Byer doesn't blink. He just moves his queen's knight out to d7 and blocks her bishop.
"Your father was a convicted arms dealer. Your mother is one of the richest women in the world. And yet, there you were, in the CIA. Conklin didn't bother to think why? That was remarkably stupid for an extremely smart man."
Nicky castles. Byer slides his queen's rook next to his king. He leans back in his chair indolently. "Why were you there, Nicky?"
"According to your report, I had daddy issues to work out."
Byer picks up one of the discarded printed chess pieces, looks at it carefully. "I think this might have been part of that report."
His delivery is so deadpan he'd be funny if she just didn't feel like screaming.
"You think we didn't know about the two of you? The weekend dates, the apartment in Montparnasse?
Nicky can't stop from reacting. Her nostrils flare, her eyes widen. "You think you know."
Byer leans forward. "I do know. Did you think it was coincidence how you were all paired up? Desh with Constantine? Owen with Maggie?"
Nicky's white rook slides up the file from d1 to take the black knight at d7.
His voice drops gently. "You with Bourne?"
His black rook snaps up her white rook.
"He's not coming for me," Nicky tells him defiantly. Nicky moves her remaining rook into the d file to challenge his rook. Byer moves his queen to e6. Her bishop at b5 takes the rook in the d file and is immediately snapped up by Byer's knight.
The lights flicker.
Byer looks up, brows raised. "You sure about that?"
Goddammit, Nicky thinks. Is it too much to ask that people do what they're told?
She forces herself to focus on the board, moving her queen up the board to threaten his king again.
"Check," she snarls.
His knight jumps to capture her queen. "Knights, Nicky," he warns her. Before she can make her next move, he leans forward. "Nicky. Do you know where your mother is?"
Nicky's eyes widen in horror.
A.N. The chess game Nicky and Byer are playing is actually the famous 1858 "A Night at the Opera" game played by American chess master Paul Morphy versus Karl II, Duke of Brunswick and the Comte Isouard de Vauvenargues. You can see the entire game play here: www. chessgames dot com/ perl/chessgame?gid=1233404
Thanks as always for your patience and enthusiasm!