The Black Knight Squash Fiction League Match

The T Party CHAPTER TEN

Christian smiled at Shay. 'Let me just grab my stuff from the car.'

Behind the smile he did a rapid assessment. Either the guy knew or he would soon. He was a smart man. Not the usual caricature of a gumshoe.

Time to put some insurance in place.

He hated that he had gotten himself into this situation. Collateral damage did happen of course, but rarely, and usually it happened with the wet workers who were hardly subtle in their methodology. But Christian wasn't a wet worker. He was a facilitator. Well, most of the time. He did have two official kills on his record, but they had been unavoidable. Now he had strayed into a US collateral mess. On top of that the 'vic' was connected by less than three degrees of separation to two women he had been intimate with and a brother who happened to be the lead detective. Careless? Perhaps. Unlucky? Too damn right!

So now what? Mossad really frowned on killing law enforcement officers from friendly powers. And anyway he had taken a liking to Shay, not to mention he was pretty sure that he was falling in love with Kim.

'So, you mind playing with a novice?' Christian offered in the locker room, where Shay had found some gear to borrow. Shay smiled as they both changed quickly. 'Something tells me that the word novice doesn't apply in your case.'

'Let's give it a whirl and see how we get on,' Shay continued, gesturing toward the courts.

After raising a sweat by sprinting a few lengths of the court, they started to warm up the ball. Shay hit it a few times and as soon as it gained some life he hit it across to Christian's forehand -- the left side of the court.

Funny, he hadn't noticed he was a lefty before. Ambidextrous?

As the warm-up progressed, Shay tracked the ball mentally, physically and emotionally, with every fiber in his being. This was not only how he had been trained as a kid, this is who he was -- a survivor and a hunter -- who locked onto his primary focus and who had all of his survival mechanisms on full alert at all times.

Christian knew who he was dealing with. He not only liked Shay, he respected him. Christian, however, was a survivor of a different kind. Shay was a hunter of the plains. Out in the open, always on guard, he was not used to having to hide. Christian on the other hand was a hunter of the jungle. Nothing he did was as it seemed. He had learned to hide in plain sight, alert, but always surreptitious.

Christian was not tracking the ball. Staring at the front wall, when the ball appeared, he would volley it back aggressively.

Was this for real, Shay wondered? Would Christian really give up precious milliseconds between the ball leaving Shay's racquet and hitting the front wall?

The first game was pretty much one-way traffic as Shay single-mindedly targeted Christian's backhand back corner. With a very decent array of lobs and drives he penetrated consistently there, despite Christian's attempts to volley his way out of trouble.

The second game was a different matter. Christian started changing his volleys from tennis-style smashes to deft cross-court volley lobs, and suddenly it was Shay who was having his backhand tested.

Shay noticed that Christian wasn't wall-watching anymore, either. And his stance was more crouched, reminiscent of a hunting panther or something more dangerous than that -- a fugitive human on the attack.

In the end the match was poised, with Shay 2-1 and 10-9 up in the fourth.

The backhand-to-backhand competition was typical of intermediate players with dubious skills in the back corners, but Shay's superior court craft and experience had gained him an advantage.

Hadn't it?

The question remained -- how much of Christian's performance was exactly that -- a performance?

Shay played a final drop and the match was over.

They shook hands, and Shay said: 'As I said, the word novice doesn't apply.'

'Oh, you were just being nice to the newbie,' said Christian, 'but I'll get you next time!'

'Not if I get you first,' thought Shay.

They went to the locker room and Christian quickly stripped naked. 'See you in a minute,' he said as he headed for the showers.

'Sure,' said Shay, appearing to be taking a long time over his shoelaces.

As he heard the shower and Christian pull the curtain, he quietly examined Christian's athletic shorts. Sure enough: Double stitched. He gently opened Christian's gym bag and looked inside. Wallet, aviator watch, shoes, socks, keys stuffed in a side pocket.

The shower was still running so Shay decided to join Christian before he was missed. 'You and Kim got any plans later?' he said conversationally.

No answer. Shay raised his voice. 'Hey Christian, I said, have you got any plans later?'

Still no answer.

Shay got out and ripped back the curtain of the cubicle next to his. Empty.

He ran to the lockers. Christian's bag was still there. Wallet, clothes, watch, keys, everything. He threw on his sweats and ran to the front desk.

'Did you see the guy I was playing with?' Shay asked urgently. The blank face told him what he needed to know. He must still be in the club or the locker room.

Shay looked everywhere he could in the deserted club.

Nothing.
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No one paid attention to the filthy old bagman pushing a shopping cart full of plastic bags filled with god-knows-what out of the alley behind the squash club.

It wasn't until later that Shay discovered the vital information that Christian had remarked on during his previous visit, that the only other egress from the club was via the window at the back of the ladies’ locker room.

Shay had never been in there, so he didn't know.

Having seen Shay going through his bag, Christian had jumped into the alley and retrieved his 'Go' bag from the dumpster, unseen. He had put it there when he had gone to his car to 'grab his gear.' The shopping cart had been a happy coincidence.

He arranged for the remaining backpack evidence to be left in a package with an explanatory note at a suburban police station, marked 'Detective Shay Samuels.'  It wouldn't stop Shay, but it made Christian feel better. He'd call Kim later. That would be a tough conversation.

He called the extraction unit and told them he wanted out in 24 hours. That was the time he had to either turn Zahedi -- or ruin him.

'I wonder if Shay and Kim would come to Israel if I sent them tickets?' he mused. 'There's a great squash club in Tel Aviv.'

Nobody paid any attention to the old bagman as he shuffled into the Transbay Transit Center and unobtrusively worked his way to the left-luggage lockers. If anyone was surprised that a bagman had one of the lockers and was removing a brown paper parcel, they certainly couldn't be found later.

Similarly no one recalled the smart, balding, blue pin-stripe-suited Moroccan businessman carrying a passport proclaiming the name Zacharia Zar that walked out of the Transbay Transit Center 20 minutes later.