J.M.J.

Chapter 7

Rook to Queen's Knight 34. The words kept swirling around Joe's mind, suggesting nothing and yet seeming as if they must mean something. According to the theory, the black rook indicated either Frank or Joe or maybe both. Apparently, they were being told to go somewhere. The kidnapper had already identified himself as the white knight, so perhaps it meant that he wanted the Hardys to come to him. So that only left the 34 to indicate where they were supposed to go. Or perhaps the specification that it was the Queen's Knight. But 34 didn't make sense as a designation for a chessboard, and so it had to have some significant meaning.

Chet had suggested that it could mean somewhere on 34th Street. With no better lead to run down, Joe had headed that way, and they were currently driving down the street, looking for something that could be a connection. It was a residential part of town, and so house after house passed by in a succession meaningless to Joe.

"Maybe someone on this street has a last name Queen or Knight, and we're supposed to go to their house," Chet suggested.

"How are we supposed to know what people's last names are just by looking at their houses?" Joe countered.

"There might be some clue," Chet replied. "We'll just have to keep watching."

There was no question whether they would, but for block after block, nothing suggested queens or knights or chess. It wasn't until they had crossed over to South 34th that they saw anything promising. This was a part of town that most people advised their kids stay away from. However, they had driven less than a block before they spotted a house painted in a garish checkerboard pattern of black and white.

"You think that's what we're supposed to be looking for?" Chet asked.

"We might as well find out."

Joe parked in front and they both got out. The house's yard was overgrown and weedy and a window in front was broken. There were no cars or personal belongings anywhere around it, making it appear that the house was uninhabited. Interestingly to Joe's mind, there was no "for sale" sign out front. Nevertheless, Joe walked right up to the front and knocked on it. There was no answer.

"I can't say I'm surprise." Joe blew out a long breath. "Well, maybe we're supposed to make ourselves at home." He reached for the door handle, and it turned easily.

"You sure we should go in?" Chet asked.

"No," Joe replied as he pushed the door open and looked around inside.

Everything appeared still and silent inside. Most of the furnishings had been removed, but the walls were painted the same garish checkerboard pattern as the outside.

"I wonder what the story is with this place," Chet said in a half-whisper.

Joe ran a finger down one of the black squares and the paint came off on his finger. "Someone's trying to make a point."

"Do you think Iola's here?" Chet asked.

"We'll find out." Joe set his jaw grimly and reached for his phone. "I'm going to call for some back-up."

"Hold on, Joe."

The voice stopped Joe in mid-motion. He knew it well. He turned toward the speaker and let out a breath. "Spencer Hale."

The agent was standing in a doorway off to the side. He must have just stepped out, because Joe was certain he hadn't been there before. Hale looked as unperturbed as ever, but Joe could feel his blood boiling at the sight of him.

"Where's my sister?" Chet demanded.

Hale paused, giving the appearance that he wasn't sure exactly what he intended to say. Joe knew better than to believe it. "I had hoped that Frank would be here, too, but I suppose I'll just have to catch up with him later."

"You're not as clever as you think," Joe told him bluntly. "Just get it over with without the gloating. But if I were you, I wouldn't forget that my dad and my brother are still out there."

"I'm not likely to forget about that. But you have the wrong idea about what's going on," Hale replied. "Back in Canada, I wasn't trying to get any of you killed. In fact, you can be glad I worked so hard to keep you all alive."

Joe shook his head in impatience. "I'm not stupid, Hale, even though you obviously think I am."

Hale sighed and shrugged. "You're not as smart as you think you are, either. Sometimes, the smart move is to play dumb. You weren't getting out of this under any circumstances, but your friend here might have, if you would have played along. You see, believe it or not, we do try to minimize collateral damage as much as possible in the Network." He pulled a gun from under his jacket. "Now you'll both have to die, and you're not gaining anything."

Chet glanced toward Joe, but Joe made no response. He only continued to stare at the agent.

"You can't honestly think you're going to get away with this," Chet spoke up finally.

Hale chuckled softly. "You know, this whole thing is nothing personal, at least from my point of view. There are others involved who feel differently. But for me, I just got assigned a mission, and that's it. I'm not even going to say it's a particularly unpleasant mission. When I signed up with the Network, I signed up to do whatever it took to get the job done. Right now, you Hardys are standing in the way of that, and so I'll do what it takes to get you out of the way, nothing more, nothing less. Because it's nothing personal, I see no point in making this worse for you. If it's some comfort to you to know that we probably won't get away with this, then be assured of that."

"Then why are you doing this?" Chet asked in disbelief.

"Because what we're doing is bigger than us as individuals," Hale said. "That's something the Hardys have never understood. They see only the individual, not the larger picture. If you can save a thousand lives by sacrificing a dozen, why not do it? In what world is it better to have a dozen live people and a thousand dead ones than to have the reverse?"

Joe shook his head in disgust. "I'm not going to argue with you."

"Because you have no argument."

"No, because you wouldn't listen. Human lives aren't anything more to you than a number. You've even been so brainwashed that your own life doesn't mean anything more to you than would be a waste of time trying to argue with you. But it sounds like we win either way, if the Network doesn't get away with this."

"I won't say you're wrong," Hale said. "But it might not be so bleak as we're all making it out to be. Although I think our new leadership leaves much to be desired these days, they did arrange to have someone who can take the fall for this. He practically volunteered. It's a fortunate thing for us that you Hardys have so many enemies."

"I can imagine how he must have volunteered," Joe snapped in reply.

"You ruined the poor guy. As long as you get ruined, too, he doesn't care much what happens to him." Hale frowned slightly. "Unfortunately, he has insisted on doing things his way, which has been one of the major problems of this entire campaign. But I've been allowed enough rein to keep things pretty well under control. We'd better go now. We don't want to get caught just talking like this."

Getting caught here would have suited his two prisoners just fine, but the gun that Hale was carrying made argument impossible. Besides, they were hoping that wherever Hale was taking them would be where Iola was at. Accordingly, they allowed themselves to be guided out of the back door of the house. There was an alley directly behind, and a four-door car was parked there. As they were passing through the door, Joe put his hand on the outside, but he didn't dare to look to see if the paint on his finger had still been wet enough to leave an impression. Instead, he looked around outside, hoping to see someone who might help.

"There's no one around," Hale told him.

"You sound sure about that," Joe noted.

"We picked a neighborhood where people keep to themselves. Now get in the car. You can drive, Chet."

Once they were in the car—with Chet in the driver's seat, Joe in the front passenger, and Hale in the back—Hale directed Chet which way to drive. They had only gone a short distance when Hale commented, "We just happened to find that house like that. I'm sure you were curious about it."

"You painted the inside," Joe told him.

"That was Katrina's idea. I thought it was dumb, too." Hale shook his head. "She should have never been assigned to this mission."

"She's one of the ones taking this personally?"

Hale chuckled softly. "I don't think there's even any need to answer that."

Joe turned to Chet. "You see, Katrina was working with Frank and me on a mission one time. She didn't realize that we hadn't gotten the memo that when the Network says to stop those terrorists by any means necessary, they mean it completely literally. She sort of let the cat out of the bag. We almost walked then. We should have. Arthur Gray was still alive then, and he talked us into staying. He persuaded us that Katrina was overselling things. She never forgave us for the talking to she got from Gray."

"I thought you said it was because Frank reminded her of her ex," Chet pointed out.

"That's what she said. Personally, I couldn't see it, unless it was just that Frank wasn't interested." Joe shook his head. "She didn't have either one of us pegged very well."

"That's neither here nor there," Hale spoke up. "The point is that she doesn't like you fellows, she was put in a position for planning this mission, and she's made a mess of it. You would think that eliminating an existential threat to our organization would have higher priority." He chuckled again. "The human capacity for absolute incompetence is really amazing. Turn here, Chet. We're taking this street out to the highway."

"How far out of town do you have Iola?" Chet asked.

"I don't have Iola anywhere. You'll understand in a little while."

"I doubt it," Chet replied darkly. He glanced at Joe. "I don't even understand your part of the story. The timeline doesn't seem to add up. I thought you didn't realize how messed up the Network was and once you did, you quit, but now you're saying that you did know sooner."

Joe looked out the window, unable to meet Chet's eyes.

"I might as well clear all that up for you," Hale said easily. "You see, your friends weren't with the Network long enough to let go of the whole idea of guilt and shame, so that's why they're not giving you the entire, straight story. You see, they have this idea that they did something horribly wrong, when really, they were saving lives. That's what comes of still seeing morality the way a six-year-old does. But I promised the whole story, beginning to end. So here goes.

Hale paused thoughtfully. "I'm not sure I can make you understand what's at stake here. Most people still cling to the idea of some actions being intrinsically evil and refuse to do them—or at least to endorse them—under any circumstances. But that's not a realistic worldview at all. It's setting yourself up for failure, because not everyone plays by those rules. Now, most people can get by on them, but not when you're dealing with terrorists. The people that the Network takes down are bent on destroying civilization. If it costs us a few civilian lives to keep that from happening, then that's not too high a price to pay. But the Hardys here have never understood that. They think it would be better to let the entire universe be smashed to pieces than to have a single innocent person killed. They can't see the irony that that person would have died anyway."

"But that's not the point," Chet protested. "How does that make you any different than the terrorists?"

Hale shook his head. "As I said, you won't understand. Anyway, though, back to the story. It was Arthur Gray who recruited Frank and Joe into our organization. He had an idea that with their skills, they could be useful to us, even if they weren't completely on board with our methods. He worked hard to shield them from finding out about them, while gradually trying to acclimatize them to be able to accept them. He put them on hard missions, especially ones that involved especially depraved things like human trafficking. But then, as we've both mentioned, they were assigned to a mission with Katrina and she let the real strategy slip out. Gray talked the Hardys into staying. He told them that Katrina was lying to them, all because of a personal grudge. I don't know that they really believe it, but they wanted to, so they gave Gray the benefit of the doubt.

"Then Gray met his end. The leadership in our section changed, and the new leadership wasn't worried about protecting the Hardys' delicate feelings. They were assigned a mission that would test them. A small terrorist cell in New Orleans that was part of a bigger, French-based organization known as Fraternité. The goal was to maneuver them into a position where they would have to take drastic measures. Our intelligence had already learned that there was a girl whom one of the Fraternité members was interested in. The Hardys were persuaded—despite their skepticism—that the best way to get to Fraternité was to recruit the girl. She was a civic-minded person, apparently, or maybe she just wanted an adrenaline boost. Anyway, she eagerly agreed. Because of her, all three of them were able to infiltrate the cell. Maybe, with time, they could have gotten enough evidence about the terrorism, but that wasn't the point. The point was to see how far they would go. They were ordered to burn the girl to Fraternité, who would then kill her and give the local police enough to break up the cell for us, without risking giving them time to carry out another attack. They wouldn't do it, so I had to arrange for it to happen. They witnessed the crime. From what I saw of the scene afterwards, it must have been intense. We pulled the Hardys right out and made sure they understood that they were entirely to blame for all of it. We knew then that they weren't trustworthy, though, so when they insisted that they wanted out, we let them out, conditionally. We made sure that they understood that if they revealed anything about the Network, we would arrange for the New Orleans police to discover that they were actually responsible for that poor girl's brutal murder."

Joe had been staring at his hands all this time, but now he couldn't contain the rage any longer. He spun around in his seat so that he could face Hale. "It was all a test? It wasn't even, in your twisted worldview, necessary to bring down those terrorists?"

Hale shrugged. "It was necessary to find out whether we could trust you or not."

He was still holding a gun that was aimed at Joe, and the car seat with its headrest was not conducive for even a much small person than Joe to jump across. Nevertheless, he managed to hurl himself halfway across it and grab at Hale, who was too surprised to shoot straight. Before he could fire again, Joe had grabbed Hale's wrist and directed the weapon away from himself. Chet gave a shout and hit the brakes. Once the car had stopped, he bailed out, intending to get into the back seat and help Joe.

However, before he could make it, the gun went off again. From the grunt of pain that Joe let out, it was clear that he had been hit. Hale started to turn to Chet, and Chet realized he wouldn't be able to do anything here. Making his decision quickly, he ducked into the brush alongside the road.

Not all the fight was out of Joe just yet. He continued trying to grapple with Hale for the gun, and it wasn't until Hale had slammed his other fist into the side of Joe's head a couple of times that he was forced to give up.

Chet watched from his position in the brush, unsure what to do. He knew there was no chance of him rescuing Joe, not with Hale armed and himself unarmed. In fact, since he could see that Joe was unconscious, that probably meant that Hale was going to start beating the brush for him now. The only chance for either of them was for Chet to remain uncaptured, at least long enough to call for help.

He checked his pockets for his phone, but he didn't find it. Of course. Hale had taken it. There was no way to call for help from here. Chet felt sick at the idea of leaving Joe like this, but making a run for it was the only chance either of them had.