Incite. James Frey
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no prison—it’s a hotel. Someone slept in the bed last night. It’s probably this agent’s personal room.
He stares at me through narrowed eyes. “I’ll let you get up when you’re finished answering my questions.” He leans forward, trying to intimidate me. “Why are you in Munich? What’s your plan here?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“We’re not in the United States,” he says. “Different rules.”
“Different rules?” I say, nervously laughing a little bit. “You’re an American, I’m an American. The Constitution guarantees my rights.”
“Here’s the passenger manifest from your flight. I’m going to read through the names, and you’re going to tell me who else is in your group.”
“Seriously?” I say, and laugh. “You have no idea what is going on. No idea.”
“I know that you are part of a terrorist group. That you’re here to make a political statement at the Olympics.”
“I’m not a terrorist. I didn’t have any friends on the plane. I’m not here to make a political statement,” I say flatly and truthfully.
“I don’t believe you, kid.”
While the agent talks, I lean back in my chair. The armrest isn’t moving enough. The joint is loose, but the back of the chair hits the wall, and I’m not able to squeeze the handcuff out through the gap. I grip the armrest, try to guess its weight.
He’s sitting again, and his chair is scooted all the way in to the table.
“I know you’re not here alone. Who else from the plane is working with you? I’m not going to ask again.”
“You’re wasting my time,” I say. “I need to get out of here. I don’t have time.”
I grip the arm of the chair with my handcuffed left hand.
“If it’s so important, why won’t you tell me what it is?”
I shove the table with my right hand, tipping it into the agent’s stomach. I leap to my feet, yank up the chair, and smash it into him. It loses some of its momentum as it scrapes against the wall, but I’m still able to bring it down on him hard. The chair breaks as it hits his shoulder and the table, but the armrest is still in my hand. I beat him across the face with it until he goes down. He’s dazed, and I scramble out from behind the table and pieces of broken chair.
He goes for his gun, slowly pushing the broken chair away. He’s bleeding from his head—a lot. I hit him again with the armrest and then give him a right hook. He’s not struggling anymore, and I grab his pistol from his holster.
I pull the broken armrest out of the handcuff and kneel down next to him to find his keys. I grab them just as he tries to throw a weak punch. It catches me off guard, and I stumble back slightly. But I have his keys and gun, and I hold the pistol in my left hand while I unlock the cuffs.
He looks up at me, his eyes barely open. “Who are you?”
“I’m Zero line. This is Endgame. I’m in Munich to save the world.”
It was a beautiful May afternoon as the bus drove into Berkeley. I was finally getting out on my own, leaving Pasadena, my job, and my parents behind. My mom had given me a halfhearted hug. We’d never been close. I wondered if my mom had ever been close to anyone. She was small and subservient and never talked.
My dad did the talking for both of them. He barked orders around the house from the minute he got home at night until long after I’d gone to my room.
He’d never wanted me to go to college. Well, to tell the truth, I was never sure what he wanted of me. After high school, I tried working at the family business for a year—Dad ran a furniture store—and I couldn’t remember doing anything that he approved of. I could never meet the outrageous quotas that he gave me, and he certainly didn’t make an effort to teach me anything. But when I told him I was going to college—that I’d saved up enough for tuition—he sneered at me as though I’d just said I was joining the circus.
But I’d held on to my money—everything I’d ever earned at the furniture store, and everything I’d earned the summers I’d worked for the Forest Service. My friends loved to go out to movies and dinner and spend money on girls and weed, but I knew I needed to be a penny-pinching miser if I ever planned to get out from under Dad’s thumb.
After I told him that I was going to Berkeley, of all places, he stopped talking to me. It was the best two months I’d ever had at home.
I wasn’t starting school until the fall, but I’d managed to get a janitorial job cleaning the empty dorms over the summer. The school let me move in early, into one of the dorms that held guys year-round, and it gave me a chance to earn a little more money and leave my parents’ house.
I couldn’t help smiling on the bus. This was everything I wanted. Freedom. A place where I could be in the middle of the action: the protests, the rallies, the parties, the free life and free love. I wanted a place where I could be my own man, voice my own opinions, be part of something important.
I was finally there.
After checking in at the administration building, I found my dorm and headed upstairs to room 117.
“Hey!” a guy said, jumping up when I opened the door. “Are you the new guy? I’ve been expecting you!”
“I’m the new guy.” I had a backpack and an old duffel bag I used to store my football gear in, and dropped them both on the empty bed. “Mike Stavros.” I held out my hand to him.
He shook it enthusiastically. He had medium brown skin and black hair that fell to his shoulders. “Tommy. Tommy Selestewa.”
“Good to meet you.”
“What are you here for? They told me you were coming, but I don’t know why anyone would come this time of year. School just got out.”
“Job brought me early,” I said. “Why are you still here?”
“Just trying to graduate earlier. I’m a sophomore, and I don’t have anything else to do—no reason to take summer off. I’ve loaded up on classes.” Tommy sat down at his desk. “Got a major?”
“Not sure yet. I’m thinking city planning, or forestry. Or maybe political science.” I sat on my bed. The mattress was thin and hard.
Tommy laughed a little. “No worries, man, you’ve got time.”
I looked at Tommy’s desk and bookshelf. He had a typewriter. A book lay open beside it—Plato’s Republic—and under it was Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. It made me feel a little small that my roommate was studying such great philosophies. This was why I’d wanted to come to college. To learn about something bigger than myself.
“I used to work for the Forest Service,” I said, “during my summers in high school. I was part of a fire crew that saved a neighborhood from a forest fire. It was coming from two sides, and we were able to redirect the flames. I was really proud of that. It makes me want to do something that will make a difference. Become someone important. Or, well, just do something important. Not just be a furniture salesman like my old man.”
“Why school, then? Why not join the fire department?”
“I thought about that, but I decided that, on the fire crew, I was just one person with a shovel and a mattock. What if I could do something bigger? Design a subdivision where fires are less likely? What if I could invent something—some kind of emergency sprinkler, or I don’t know what. Something.”
“I get that,” he said. “So you want to fight fires on