Grandmaster (34 page)

"He was an agent of the CIA. I thought I'd killed him in Poland four years ago, but I have learned he is still alive. I don't know where."

"Is he important? The Committee knows next to nothing about him."

"The Committee has never known anything that requires thought," Zharkov said. He saw Kadar bristle. "Important? Justin Gilead is perhaps the most dangerous man on earth."

"Come, now," Kadar said with a forced urbanity. "No man is so powerful as that."

Zharkov fixed him with a look that sent a shiver up the premier's neck. "There are things even the premier of the Soviet Union cannot know about men. Or power," he said finally.

Neither man spoke for several minutes as Kadar made a show of riffling through the papers on his desk. Zharkov was the first to break the silence. "He will be in Havana."

"Gilead? Is he a chess player, too?"

Zharkov nodded. "A grandmaster.
The
Grandmaster."

He rose, unasked.

"You have a great deal of confidence, Comrade Colonel," Kadar said. "No one else would have spoken to me the way you did."

"And remained alive," Zharkov finished.

Kadar attempted a smile. "Times change."

"Nichevo does not change."

The premier rose. "We have never had this meeting," he said. "I know nothing of what Nichevo is doing, in Cuba or elsewhere."

"That is correct," Zharkov said, and prepared to leave. He stopped near the doorway. "One more thing. Did you authorize Ostrakov to put a microphone in Comrade Velanova's apartment?"

Kadar made a dismissive gesture. "Of course not. Ostrakov's games do not concern me. Who is this woman to you?"

"A woman," Zharkov said. "If Ostrakov was acting on his own, I will have to repay him for that particular 'game.'"

"You are a chess player," Kadar said, the dead eyes lighting with a hint of amusement. "What will be the nature of your countermove?"

Zharkov deliberated for a moment, then said, "I will trade queens," before walking out.

 

 

Z
harkov's instructions to Katarina were brief:
"Leave the office now. Buy some men's clothes that fit you and wait for me at my apartment."

"What is going on?"

"I'll explain it all later," he said as he hung up the telephone in the street-corner booth.

He drove to one of the old districts of Moscow, a neighborhood with a heavy concentration of Arabs, where young Russian women with painted faces huddled from the cold in doorways, occasionally calling out to passersby. Prostitution was officially illegal and severely punished, but as long as the activity remained confined to certain areas, the law managed to look the other way.

From another street corner telephone he called his office. Katarina had already left, and he spoke to one of his assistants. "Velanova has been terminated," he said. "She will be transferred for work on the Trans-Siberian railway. Prepare the necessary documents at once and put them in her file."

He heard the man stammer. "To Siberia, Colonel?"

"Do what I tell you."

The young women were lined up in the identical doorways of identical tumbledown buildings. With their bare knees showing below their heavy winter coats, the girls looked like worn, uncared-for dolls on a toymaker's shelf.

"Looking for some fun, mister?" one of them called. She was squat and fat with yellow strawlike hair. Zharkov shook his head and continued to move down the line of doorways.

"You," he said, pointing to a tall, thin woman with a cold-reddened nose. "Take off your hat."

"That'll be fifty kopeks," a fat blonde called from another doorway, and two other women laughed. The tall girl stepped forward warily and removed the brown knit turban she wore. Her hair was dark and cut short like Katarina's.

"You'll do." He motioned her to follow him down the street.

"He picked Galina," one of the girls whispered, giggling. "Maybe he's short of cash."

In the fading light, Zharkov examined the woman's face more carefully. "How old are you?"

"Twenty." She looked ten years older. "Do you want to go to my apartment?"

"I have a car." He led her to the Chaika. She fingered the leather seats as if they were made of gold. "You must be very rich," she said admiringly as she got into the passenger seat.

He pressed the button that locked all four windows and doors. "I am an official of the Committee for State Security," he said, unbuttoning his overcoat to show his uniform. "Hand over your papers."

She threw herself against the door, banging futilely on the closed windows.

"Be still," he snapped. "No one's going to hurt you. Where are your papers?

From her pocket she produced a grubby plastic wallet, but even as she handed it to him, she was pleading, "Please. Don't send me to prison. I won't do it anymore."

"All I want is for you to take a train ride," Zharkov said.

The girl's face froze. "Where to?"

"The north. For a real job."

The girl's face twisted in bewilderment for a moment, then sank into blankness. "Siberia," she said. "You're sending me to Siberia."

In the warmth of the car, Zharkov could smell the odor of her fear.

"You'll have handsome wages. If you save your money, when you come back you'll have enough to make yourself beautiful, perhaps buy a nice apartment and a car."

"You're crazy," she said. "Let me out of here."

He took her wrist and held it firmly. "If I accuse you of prostitution, you'll go to prison. If I accuse you of picking my pocket, the term will be even longer. Suppose I say you tried to steal my car. You will never get out of prison. You will do as I say."

The girl looked up at him miserably. "Why are you doing this to me?" she squeaked, trying to hold back the tears. "There were so many others."

Because you don't matter, Zharkov thought. Because no one will miss you, no one will look for you, no one will care when you disappear off the face of the earth. He started the car. As he drove, he took a packet from his coat and handed it to her. "These are your new papers," he said.

She looked at them suspiciously. "Katarina Velanova. Who's she?"

"She is you, from now on," Zharkov said.

"I don't like this. I want to get out."

They were stopped for a traffic light and Zharkov turned and stared at her icily. "Don't make me kill you," he said.

She lowered her eyes. "You people can do anything."

Zharkov pulled into the parking lot near the massive railway station. The train carrying the Siberian work volunteers was on a distant track. There were three cars, two for men and one for women. There were rows of wooden benches inside, but most of the passengers were crammed onto the floor. They were rough-looking people, each with a personal reason for volunteering to work in the hostile Siberian climate under primitive conditions. Some were going for the high wages, but an equal number were traveling to escape the law. They went because virtually no questions were asked of the volunteers.

In the women's car, the passengers sat sullenly, jockeying for space on the seats and floor. The eyes of the women turned silently toward the young woman as she and Zharkov approached.

"I'm not going in there," the young whore told Zharkov.

He jerked her arm forward.

"This is some kind of fucking concentration camp!" She swung at him. "I'm not going, I tell you. You're pulling some kind of trick."

A uniformed soldier came over. His blue shoulder boards indicated that he was a sergeant. "Anything wrong, Colonel?" he asked politely.

"This person has been reassigned to work on the railway," Zharkov said.

"I'll look after her personally, Comrade Colonel," the sergeant said, saluting. He shoved Galina roughly into the train car. The other women cursed and complained loudly as the girl tumbled over them.

"You're a pig!" Galina screamed through the open car door at Zharkov.

"Shut up," the sergeant said lazily. He was a young man, but he had obviously heard last-minute pleas as desperate as Galina's before. The women cackled.

When he turned away from the train, Zharkov noticed four people standing far across the platform, watching him. It was common for the worst criminals, who were fleeing to Siberia, to wait until the final few minutes before jumping onto the train, just in case there was a last-minute police search of the railroad cars for someone wanted for a crime.

His attention was caught by one woman. She was probably forty, but she looked sixty. Her face was ravaged by a long badly healed knife scar, and her complexion was blotched, red, and alcoholic.

But what he noticed was the back of her right hand as she reached up to push back a tendril of dirty-looking hair that had spilled from under her black cap onto her face.

A word was tattooed across her knuckles. Zharkov recognized the mark as a prison tattoo. Usually these spelled out the crime the person had committed. It was the convict's self-destructive way of thumbing his nose at society.

As Zharkov walked toward the group, the train's engines rumbled to life and the four people started running toward the railroad cars. Zharkov intercepted the woman and grabbed her by the right arm. Even through her coat, her arm felt muscularly stringy. He looked at her hand. The word tattooed across the back of her hand was "Murderer."

"Going to Siberia?" Zharkov said.

"Yes."

"I suppose you will find the climate there much more comfortable than here," he said.

"I just want to leave Moscow," she said.

"Before the police catch you?"

"I—" she started, but Zharkov interrupted her.

"Don't worry. Come over here. There is a favor I want you to do."

A few moments later, he released the woman, who ran toward the train. She just got into the women's car before the army sergeant closed the doors.

As he walked back to the parking lot, Zharkov thought it was a game of pawns after all. Every chess game was a game of pawns, and no game was ever decided until many pawns had fallen.

 

Katarina was waiting in his apartment.
She was wearing the men's clothes Zharkov had told her to buy, and she looked like a slender, hairless youth.

"You make a handsome boy," Zharkov said with a smile.

"Alyosha, I've been sick with worry all day. What's going on?"

"Get in the car," he ordered. "We're in a hurry."

Driving away, he told her about his meeting with Kadar. She asked, "What does that mean, to trade queens?"

"It means that your life is vulnerable right now to Ostrakov's hoodlums," Zharkov said. "That's why I'm getting you out of here."

"Where will I go?"

"Officially, you've gone to Siberia. Didn't you always want to be a railway worker?" He tried smiling at her, but her face was glum and unhappy. "Anyway, here are your new papers," he said. He handed her the cheap plastic packet he had taken from Galina, the prostitute. Katarina did not even look at them, but stuck them in her pocket.

After a moment she asked, "You're not really sending me to Siberia, are you?"

Zharkov smiled. "No. You're going to Cuba."

"But why?"

"Because you'll be safe there." He was unable to keep the exasperation from his voice.

"And you?"

"I will be safe, too," Zharkov said. "Kadar cannot move against me without first finding my records, and he will never find them."

"How can you be so sure? He can tear this country apart. He can find them."

"He can't find them," Zharkov insisted.

"Why not?" She was nearly shouting. "Alyosha—"

"He can't find them because they don't exist," Zharkov said.

Katarina's eyes registered surprise, then amusement, then admiration.

"It was my father's advice: 'What you never wish found, commit only to your own memory.'" He pulled into a small side street and stopped the car. He scanned the street and said, "Good, here's my man."

A tall, thin man with an uncombed scraggly beard was approaching the car. "That is Felix," Zharkov told Katarina. "He will take you to Primorsk, and the two of you will get on a trawler. At sea, you'll transfer to another ship, which will take you to Cuba." At her worried look, he said, "Don't fret. You'll be perfectly safe. Felix is Nichevo, and he's been in Cuba many times."

Katarina's pertness had dissolved. She looked down at her hands. "Why does it have to be this way?" she asked, choked.

He touched her face. There was no answer that would make this easier. “Things will not always be this way,” he said. When he had kept my promise to Varja, he knew, everything will have changed.

"When will I see you again?" she asked as she opened the passenger door of the car.

"Soon. When I come to Cuba. Go now. There isn't much time."

She threw her arms around him and kissed him until he pushed her away. Then she stepped from the car, closed the door quietly, and walked off with Felix toward a waiting car down the street.

 

M
aria Lozovan had not wasted any time
. Her broken front tooth had been repaired when she let Zharkov into her apartment. She was dressed in fashionable Western-style pants and a thin silk blouse through which he could see her bare breasts.

She looked at him triumphantly and said, "I trust you've come to apologize."

"I've come to do what the
Vozhd
ordered me to do," Zharkov said.

"Good," she said with satisfaction. "It is good for a man like you to crawl a little. It reminds you that you are human, after all."

"Not here, though," Zharkov said.

She arched a penciled eyebrow. "Where, then?"

"Ostrakov's. I want a witness to my abject apology and my admission of wrongdoing," Zharkov said.

He waited until she got a fur coat, then led her to his car. A few minutes later, they were speeding toward the outskirts of Moscow.

"This isn't the way to Ostrakov's," she said, an edge of panic creeping into her voice.

"No, it isn't," Zharkov said, and when she turned to look at him questioningly, he punched her jaw viciously and she slumped unconscious against the passenger door.