Grandmaster (19 page)

"About the diamonds, Dr. Tauber..."

"I don't know where he got them. I didn't ask. All I knew was that he was hungry and dirty, and the best damn chess player I ever met. We played four more games, and then I gave him a sandwich. He took all the lunch meat out of it; I remember that. Ate the bread. Then I let him take a shower and bunk on the boat overnight. I half expected to find my radio gone with him the next day, but he was still there. He tried to give me a diamond, but I wouldn't take it. Hell, I said, I ought to pay you for showing me that defense."

Starcher glanced at his watch. He wanted the woman to take her time with her story, to remember everything she could, but her forty minutes was running out. "He said nothing about the diamonds?"

"I told you, I didn't ask," she said vehemently. "Oh, hell. I did ask."

Starcher waited.

"He didn't steal them, I'd bet my life on that. You see ... How much has he told you about himself?"

"He told a rather bizarre story about living in the Himalayas," Starcher said flatly.

"Then you know," she said with some relief. "That's true."

Starcher stared at her.

"The region around Amne Xachim near the Tibetan border has been of interest to scholars for centuries because of the Patanjali legend." She looked up. "Do you know what I'm talking about?"

Starcher said he didn't. She glanced around, annoyed. "Then how do you expect to know anything about him? What time is it?"

"Three forty-five."

"I've got to get to my class." She raised herself out of the chair with some effort and lumbered over to the three bookcases that lined three walls of her office, picking out an armload of books. "You'd better read fast," she said, thrusting the books toward Starcher. "I want those back by tonight." She gave him the address of her apartment on West Eighty-Sixth Street. "Now, out. You can read in the library."

Starcher read until his eyes were bleary, comprehending next to nothing about the strange customs and religions in the ancient lands that came to be known as India, Nepal, Burma, and Tibet. He had nearly decided that Anna Tauber was a well-meaning but shaggy-minded academic when he turned a page and saw a drawing of the revered medallion bearing the image of the coiled snake, owned by the monks of Rashimpur and prized as the most sacred amulet of the sect.

"The drawing is based on verbal testimony," the text explained. "No contemporary Westerner has ever seen the medallion or, for that matter, Rashimpur itself. All that is known about the monastery is that it stands somewhere in the vicinity of Amne Xachim, a mountain that is held to be sacred by both Brahmans and Buddhists."

Was the golden medallion the same one he had seen around the neck of the young man in the isolation room at Langley? Of course not, Starcher told himself. A cheap imitation purchased at a flea market in Katmandu. Or New York City, for that matter.

The text went on: According to legend, the high priest of the Rashimpur sect is the direct reincarnation of Patanjali (and thence Brahma) himself, and is selected at the moment of his birth by his predecessor. At the time of the priest's death, the monks of Rashimpur set out to find the successor according to the directions of their dying leader.

"There is evidence that the leaders chosen often hail from far distant lands, and themselves have no knowledge of their place in the ancient rites until their arrival at the monastery. In 1653, a twenty-one-year-old Swiss clerk named Karl Behrmann disappeared from his native village of Dorhoffbatten, leaving his young wife and two sons. Sixty years later, when Behrmann lay on his deathbed, he composed a letter to his sons outlining his strange adventure on the other side of the world. Although Behrmann did not disclose the location of the monastery, he described its 'golden wonders and immortal delights,' including a tree that grew in the center of the edifice with neither light nor water. In the letter, which was preserved by the Behrmann family until 1879, when it was destroyed by fire, Behrmann admonished his then-elderly sons 'not to mourn my absence nor hold my memory in bitterness, for I was called to fulfill a destiny so removed from the ken of mortal men that none but the past keepers of the medallion and the Eye of Rashimpur can know my heart.'

"The reference to the Eye of Rashimpur is obscure, but some scholars believe it to signify the legendary diamond revered by the monks of the sect and held by its priest, along with the coiled snake medallion, as symbols of his office."

Starcher closed the books and went to Dr. Tauber's apartment. When she opened the door, he handed her the books.

"Do you expect me to believe this?" he asked the professor.

She took the books from him. "I don't expect you people to believe anything. It was my obligation to show you the truth, even if it doesn't mean anything to you. The curse of the educator."

Starcher stood silently in the foyer of the apartment crammed with Far Eastern artifacts. "I'd still like to ask you some more questions."

Tauber laughed. "So you're not as closed-minded as you're supposed to be, after all." She walked away from him, into the apartment. "Come in. Sit down. Coffee?"

He shook his head. She poured him some anyway.

"Dr. Tauber, I'd better explain to you now that if you're involved with this man in any sort of activity subversive to the United States or its intelligence services, the consequences are going to be unpleasant."

"Here they come. The threats. Cream and sugar?"

"You don't seem to understand. I was thinking of using this man with the Central Intelligence Agency. I'm not about to accept a bunch of hocus-pocus as adequate background."

"You're the one who doesn't understand, Mr. Starcher. Justin Gilead is probably the most unusual man in the world. He speaks twelve languages. He can run twenty miles without breaking a sweat, for God's sake. He can swim more than a mile underwater." She was shouting. "You want the truth about him? I wish I could give it to you. I know that when
Rook's Tour
sprung a leak, he dived down under it and stayed there twenty minutes and patched it. And he wasn't wearing air tanks. You want the truth? I don't know. Everything he's told me about Rashimpur checks out with what little I know, and his knowledge of the area, in which I do have some expertise, is far too accurate to be extracted from books. Aside from that, he's twenty-six years old. He might be lying, but in my opinion, no one could know as much as he does without firsthand experience."

"He said he'd work for us for nothing, but that he'd want a favor someday," Starcher said.

Dr. Tauber shrugged.

"What's the favor?" Starcher asked.

"Damned if I know," she said.

"Do you know where Gilead is now?"

She was silent.

"I should have guessed." Starcher said.

 

R
ook's Tour
was a dilapidated houseboat
whose blue and white paint was peeling off in strips.

"Justin Gilead," Starcher called from the pier.

After a few moments the young man he had talked with at Langley appeared. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Over the shirt hung the gold coiled snake medallion.

"I'm Andrew Starcher. I met you at Langley." He extended his hand. Gilead refused it.

"Yes. You were the last of the pests," he said coldly. "Did you think of more questions?"

"The same one I asked before. What favor will you want?"

"Same answer as before," Gilead said. "I can't tell you specifically."

"Tell me generally."

"Why should I?" Gilead asked.

"Because I'm going back to Europe in a few days. Because if what you've told us is true, I could probably use you."

"Where in Europe?" Gilead asked. His eyes had not left Starcher's throughout the entire conversation. He hadn't seemed to blink.

"I'm going back to Paris. After that, I should be assigned to Moscow," Starcher said.

"Russia," Gilead said. "All right. There's a Russian named Alexander Zharkov. Do you know who he is?"

"Yes," Starcher said, trying to disguise his surprise. "Do you?"

"Yes. He is the son of Vassily Zharkov who is the head of Nichevo. He'll take over when his father dies."

"What do you know about Nichevo?" Starcher asked.

"Not as much as you do," Gilead said. "But I know what it is and what it does."

"And what's this favor you're going to want?" Starcher asked.

"Someday I'm going to have to kill Alexander Zharkov," Gilead said. "When that day comes, I'll want you to tell me where to find him."

"That's it?" Starcher said. "That's the favor?"

"Yes."

"You won't want any help?"

"No," Gilead said. "I won't need any help."

"What do you have against Alexander Zharkov?" Starcher asked.

"He stole something that belonged to me," Gilead said.

"What?"

"My life." He fingered the medallion around his neck.

"Is that the real coiled snake of Rashimpur?" Starcher asked.

"Yes," Gilead said.

"I don't know whether I believe you or not," Starcher said.

"You will," Justin Gilead said.

 

B
efore going to France, Starcher returned
to Langley to find something out, and the next day he went again to see Gilead on
Rook's Tour.

"Bad news," he said. "I'm afraid our deal's off."

"Why is that?" Gilead asked. He was busy on the deck of the boat splicing rope, his back to Starcher.

"Alexander Zharkov," Starcher said and got a moment's satisfaction when he saw Gilead's back stiffen and the young man turn toward him, fixing him with his cold blue eyes. "He's probably dead," Starcher added.

"Oh?" Gilead said blandly. "Who told you that?" Starcher could have sworn that he had seen the young man sigh in relief.

"I just came back from Langley. Zharkov was out on some kind of secret army patrol in India about eight months ago. Some border problem. The whole patrol vanished. Everyone's presumed dead."

"Zharkov's alive," Gilead said.

"You don't seem to understand," Starcher said. "The whole patrol, Zharkov included, vanished. Not a word from them for eight months."

"
You
don't seem to understand," Gilead said. "The patrol
is
dead. But Zharkov's alive."

"How do you know that?" Starcher snapped. Gilead's patronizing attitude was beginning to annoy him. "How do you know the patrol's dead? How do you know Zharkov's alive, when he's been lost in the damned mountains for eight months?"

"I know the patrol's dead because I killed them," Gilead said simply.

For a moment, Starcher was stunned speechless. Then he said, "And Zharkov?"

"I didn't kill him," Gilead said. "I let him live."

"Why?"

Gilead turned back to the large coils of rope on the deck of the houseboat, and bent down to resume his work. He spoke quietly, almost as if to himself, but Starcher heard every chilling word clearly.

"Because it isn't time yet," he said.

 

 

S
tarcher had almost forgotten about Justin Gilead
. He had been five months at his post in Paris, the first in what he knew would be a long career-concluding series of desk jobs, and he hated it. Of course the work, interesting or not, was important. Coordinating European activities of the CIA and "friendlies"—pro-Western nations—was critical to maintain the West's position in the world, particularly with Nichevo roaming about, but still Starcher longed to be in the field again.

He kept filing routine requests for reassignment, which were routinely rejected. Then one gray wintry afternoon, his deputy came into his office in the American embassy and put a single piece of pink paper on his desk.

"One of our analysts just put this together," he said. "I figured you'd be interested."

The brief report had been culled from Soviet publications, internal information, and hints picked up by men in the field.

Alexander Zharkov was alive. According to the memo, Zharkov had shown up in Moscow and reported that he and his entire patrol had been ambushed by hostile tribesmen while on secret duty in India a year earlier. Zharkov had been injured and had suffered amnesia. For a year, not knowing who he was, he was cared for by the monks at a small monastery in the Himalayas. Then his memory returned. Before leaving the monastery— because he did not know what he might have told the monks while an amnesiac—he "neutralized" the monks. There was a possibility, the report said, that Zharkov would be presented with a medal for his "bravery and heroism."

"Thanks," Starcher said and dismissed his deputy with a nod. When the young man left, Starcher read the report again. He didn't believe Zharkov's story for a moment, but there seemed no doubt that the young Russian was alive.
And Justin Gilead had known
.

How?

Had his story been true?

Had Gilead himself slain the entire patrol and let Zharkov go free? If that was true, where had Zharkov been for the past year?

Justin Gilead showed up at the office that day, and Starcher had a chance to ask him those questions. But to Starcher's announcement that Alexander Zharkov was alive, Gilead only said, "I told you that. Don't give me facts I already know. That's not our deal."

The CIA chief's attempts to get any more information out of Gilead were exasperatingly fruitless. Finally, Starcher said, "Where have you been?" He noted that despite the chill weather, Gilead was wearing only a suit jacket. His shirt was open at the throat; the snake amulet hung around his neck.

"I've been playing chess," Gilead said. "I had to get my grandmaster ranking, so I could play anywhere. I'm ready to work now."

"Just like that?" Starcher said. "You think it's all that easy? You haven't been trained."

"In what?"

"Self-defense. Weapons. Codes. Tradecraft. How to know you're being followed. What to do about it. So many things."

"Those are all fine for your employees, Mr. Starcher," Gilead said calmly. "But I'm not one of your employees. I'm a chess player." He reached into his jacket pocket, extracted a slip of paper, and handed it to Starcher.