Grandmaster (3 page)

"It is a strange thing, that," Saarinen said quietly. "I felt it, too. Almost a power it had. I nearly threw it away." He laughed quickly. "But who throws real gold away, eh? And the snake may be an antique. I thought I would hold it until I get to Stockholm and see what it's worth."

Riesling's heart was thudding. He had seen the medallion before. It had hung then around the neck of a man now dead, a man with extraordinary power, a man who had once saved Riesling's life.

"Where did you get this?" His words came out in a hoarse whisper.

Saarinen tossed a crumpled twenty into the center of the table and dealt the cards. "Podhale. Near the Tatra Mountains, in Poland."

Riesling looked up, his face drained of color. "Where in the Podhale?"

"A village about twenty kilometers north of Zakopane. I forget the name. Cards?"

Riesling picked up his hand slowly. "When?" he asked.

"What? Do you want cards or not?"

The American forced his attention back to the cards and discarded two. "When did you pick it up? The medallion."

"Oh, that." Saarinen laughed as he tossed down a card and dealt more from the deck. "I don't know. Two months. Maybe three." The long ash from his cigarette dropped onto his shoulder and rolled in an untidy trail down the front of his jacket. He sheared off another slice of sausage and offered the rest to Riesling, who shook his head.

"There's a story," the captain said, belching. "Some fool runs up to me as I'm driving out of the village in a donkey cart. Of course, I was ready to shoot the bastard—it was dead night and me without any papers and my pockets full of cash—but he didn't act like any kind of military type. Arms flapping, checking behind him every other second. So I figured a family man who'd stolen something in the village for a little food money. I had to laugh." He took another swallow and gestured to his partner to get on with the game.

Riesling breathed deeply. "He stole it from a grave, didn't he?"

The captain cocked his head and looked at him, curious. "How did you know about the grave?"

Riesling shook his head. A grave robber. Of course. There wasn't any other explanation. Even the Grandmaster didn't rise from beneath six feet of earth. He had seen the records himself, the photographs the Russians had gloatingly sent. Death was death, the final victor. For all the Grandmaster's miracles, he couldn't stand up to death.

He threw in another ten dollars. "I knew the man it belonged to," he said simply. "He was killed outside of Zakopane. In the Podhale. He wore that medallion when he was buried. That was four years ago."

Saarinen smiled. "But it couldn't be the same medal," he said indulgently.

"It was the same. The drop of gold on the bottom of the snake. Hand poured, very old. It'll bring you a hundred or more American in Stockholm."

Saarinen stared at him for a moment, then burst into a fit of bellowing laughter, banging the bottle on the tabletop. "Well, I'll be a son of a whore!" he shouted, brimming with mirth. "I'm going to make a dollar or two. Wonderful."

Riesling won the hand and scraped in his winnings. Saarinen handed him the deck. "Fucking Polacks'll tell you anything," the captain said, lighting another cigarette between bursts of wheezing laughter. "You should have heard the maniac. Psst. Psst." He performed an elaborate pantomime of a man whispering secrets as he scanned the horizons for unseen law officers. Riesling smiled. "Been in the family for years, he says. Belongs to the Undead One, he says. Shot by a Russian colonel. Buried in a rock slide. Dug up and buried again. Risen from the dead, yet!" He chortled. "Pretty good, eh? The Polish Jesus Christ."

Riesling dropped the card he was dealing. His fingers froze suspended in midair.

The Grandmaster had been killed in a rock slide.

"Excuse me," Riesling said, pulling the cards back to him.

Scowling, Saarinen picked up the dropped card. It was a deuce. He tossed it back with a grin. "Just checking."

Riesling said slowly, "He didn't happen to mention how he got the medallion, I suppose."

"Oh, he had an answer for everything, that one. Said his son found it buried outside the house where this vampire or whatever, the Undead One, lived. With the village whore, no less!" He guffawed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. "On my mother's grave, I swear that's what he said. Mary Magdalene, no doubt. I had to give him the money after that." Hooting, he drained the bottle with a vengeance and rummaged behind the sink for another.

"How long did he have the amulet?" Riesling asked.

"Well, maybe it was four years," Saarinen said. He belched loudly as he returned to the table with a fresh bottle of vodka. "He said he was afraid to sell it because the Russians might find out he had it. But he'd sell it to me because I was leaving the country."

"And the dead man?" Riesling asked.

"You mean the Undead One?" Saarinen said mockingly. "Remember? We're talking about a Polack vampire here."

"What happened to him?" Riesling said as he made a show of looking at his cards.

Saarinen lowered his voice into the hushed tones of a storyteller unfolding a tale of horror and death. "The Russian colonel," he said. "He came looking for the Undead One, and the vampire vanished. The Russian killed the whore in a rage. No one ever saw the Undead One again. The Polack swears the grave was empty."

"You're right," Riesling said lightly. "Another fairy tale."

Saarinen leaped from the bench. "There's Gogland." He pointed to a speck of land ahead, barely visible through the porthole. He ran to the companionway and shouted, "Cast your nets!" to the men on deck. Then he blustered from the cabin as the sailors above threw out the fishing nets.

In a few minutes he returned, bleary from the blast of morning sunlight. "For the sea patrols," he said. "We won't stay here long. No fish." He winked and sat back down heavily in front of his cards. "New deal," he said, shoving them aside.

Riesling gathered up the cards again.

"Not that I don't trust you, my friend," Saarinen said.

"I understand."

"You think it's worth a hundred American? I got it for five hundred zlotys. What's that? Twenty American, I think. That's the first time I ever made a profit on a Polack. You know, my brother married a Polack. That's why I have to go there."

Riesling dealt. With a grunt, Saarinen put his feet up on the table and rested his head on the sink behind him. "Rising from the dead," he muttered. "Speaking English. Playing chess. Must have been drunk out of his mind."

"What's that?" Riesling asked sharply.

Saarinen raised by twenty. "Drunk. Drunk, I said."

"You said chess." Suddenly Riesling was shivering.

Saarinen smacked his lips sleepily and grinned. "Who knows? Maybe in Poland, Jesus Christ is an English-speaking vampire chess player. If you've got your own pope, you can do anything."

Riesling tried to steady his hands. "Saarinen, I want that medallion," he said. With a start, the captain brought himself out of his doze. "I'll give you two hundred dollars for it."

Saarinen took his time answering. He appraised the American slowly, his smiling eyes taking in the clenched jaw and sudden outpouring of sweat. "Sentimental reasons?" he asked.

Riesling worked to keep his face a blank. "The dead man had relatives," he said. "They'd like to have it."

"Ah, yes, for the relatives." The captain stroked the sooty growth on his chin. "Quite a large sum, my friend. The necklace must be a valuable object. To you, at least, eh?"

His smile faded. Riesling's Hammerli pistol was pointed directly at his face."Two hundred dollars," Riesling said.

Saarinen spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "My friend," he said soothingly. His satyr's smile returned. "Make it three."

 

 

A
ndrew Starcher ran his hands over his face
, vaguely hoping that the gesture would somehow stop the headache pounding in his brain. He read the coded message from the American consulate in Leningrad in front of him for the second time, then reached in his desk drawer for the vial of Aldril.

"Tranquilizers?" Corfus asked, an amused smile softening his blunt Tartar features.

"Blood pressure pills. I'm a rare spy. I'm going to die of old age, I guess." Starcher shook out two of the tablets and washed them down with cold coffee.

At sixty-six, Andrew Starcher was a recruiting poster for the American diplomat—genteel, distinguished, his snow white hair and hawklike nose bespeaking generations of good breeding. Grimacing, he pushed the telex cable toward his assistant.

Outside, the first snowfall was accumulating in the cobalt twilight of the Arbat district of Moscow, its graceful old homes twinkling with warm light. In that snow, Starcher knew, someone was watching.

Someone was always watching. Any number of KGB pavement artists with their cigarette-lighter cameras and miniature radio transceivers invariably lurked around the American embassy at any given time, and the office of the cultural attaché was particularly fascinating to them.

Starcher had known about diplomatic espionage since his first days with the CIA, but it had always seemed like a joke. Even newspapers weren't particularly interested in stories about diplomatic personnel who were chased out of a country for spying.

Now, here he was, after twenty-five years in the field, arranging square-dancing exhibitions and tours of Moscow for American movie stars. He was vaguely embarrassed about it, even though it was only the cover for his true job as the top CIA man in the city.

Mike Corfus bent over the rumpled cablegram, squinting as he followed Starcher's decoding markings. His bulky appearance belied Corfus's sharp intelligence. The son of Russian immigrants who'd settled on New York's seamy Lower East Side, he had worked his way through Yale and had graduated summa cum laude right into the CIA, without any of the usual family connections.

He had been in Moscow only a month, serving as Starcher's eyes and legs. Where Starcher, locked up by his visibility, could only conjecture about what the Soviets were doing, Corfus could go out on the street and find out. He was Starcher's deputy in dealing with field agents like Riesling.

Corfus's immediate predecessor had died a suicide, hanged in his home. It was the sort of "suicide" the KGB specialized in for annoying diplomatic personnel. Corfus welcomed the risk. He was fluent in Russian, was as tough as a commando, hated the Communists, and Starcher trusted him.

"I don't understand the message," Corfus said honestly.

"It's very simple," Starcher said. "Riesling left a message at one of our drops in Leningrad. He's got a lead on two big Russians who want to defect, and he's on his way here to set it up. Saarinen brought him in."

"Who's Saarinen?"

"Some degenerate Finnish fishing captain whom Riesling always uses. But the message says that Riesling's got some big news for me."

"Hold on," Corfus said. "Two defectors. What two defectors?"

"I don't know. I queried Helsinki, but they didn't even know Riesling took off on this run. He went without authorization."

"Great," Corfus said sarcastically. "He's got big news for you. What news? Did he say?"

Starcher shook his head. "I think this is going to be the last run for Riesling. He's losing his judgment."

He reached for one of the thick Havana cigars he kept on his desk, debated whether or not to heed his doctor's orders, and the doctor lost. He bit the end off the cigar, spitting it out with guilty satisfaction.

Corfus said, "I don't know how the hell he got through the Finnish border. The KGB is crawling up there."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Starcher said. "Maybe he picked up a tail and knows about it. Maybe that's why he left this message so vague, just in case it got into the wrong hands."

"So we wait?" Corfus said.

"We wait," Starcher said as he lit the long black cigar.

As Corfus sprawled on the leather banquette alongside the large desk, he said, "I don't understand about Finland anyway. Why did the Russkies pack the border? They own Finland."

"They own Cuba, too," Starcher said, "and they're sending people in there, too." He blew out a thin stream of white smoke. Cuba was what he didn't understand. Finland was a perennial escape route for Russian defectors. The KGB could always make a case for beefing up personnel there, particularly with a new premier to impress.

But Cuba? Cuba was totally in Russia's pocket. Yet the island had been getting a slow buildup of KGB agents and troops, and despite Fidel Castro's loud complaints, the new men were neither withdrawn nor explained.

"There's no pattern," Corfus said. "That's what's confusing."

"Oh, there's a pattern," Starcher said. "There's always a pattern. Nichevo." He sighed. It was the only explanation, and it frightened him.

"Nichevo?"
Corfus smiled, surprised. "It means 'nothing. Who cares?' It means a lot of things."

"I know. A joke of Joseph Stalin's," Starcher said. He walked over to the window and looked down at the snow-covered street. Beneath a street lamp stood a man, shivering in the cold, surrounded by new snow. He had not moved from his spot in hours.

Starcher laughed bitterly. "Another hero of the cold war," he said, staring at the little man below. But he felt the same twinge of envy he had felt every day since he had been posted in Moscow, consigned to stare out at the world beyond the goldfish bowl that was the embassy.

Starcher missed the field work. He had left his aristocratic southern roots to do battle in three bloody wars and every filthy secret skirmish in between. This world, peopled with misfits—from the shivering little man on the pavement below to the secret masters who pulled the invisible strings that set earthshaking events in motion—this was the world he had chosen to live in, to die in. He had never married, never spawned the offspring from his family's ancient and promising gene pool. Because the work came first. Not the Company—the work.

It was a perversion, he supposed, as sick and senseless as the urge to molest small children. To be in love with secrecy, to relish fear, was more than simple patriotism. A man of Starcher's age ought to have outgrown it, he knew. Most agents burned out quickly and looked forward to working behind a desk.