Grandmaster (38 page)

"I'll get you in. I'm more concerned with how you're going to get out."

"After I do what I've gone there to do, I don't really care if I get out or not," Justin said.

"Well, I do," Starcher snapped. Justin shrugged and left the room to return to his exercise.

The next morning, he would reappear and ask, "Have you figured out how I'm getting into Cuba?"

One day, Starcher handed Justin a list of four names. "These are the American players who are making the trip," he said.

Gilead looked at them and nodded. "Needham," he said aloud. "That's good. He owes me a favor. I'll be going in his place. Did you figure out how I'm getting into Cuba?"

"You know," Starcher said, "I've been reading a book. I don't know anything about chess, but I've been reading about the Fischer-Spassky match."

"A wonderful match," Gilead said.

"I couldn't tell if it was a wonderful match or a blowout," Starcher said. "But Fischer had a second. Are you allowed to have a second?"

"Of course," Gilead said.

"Good. Then we're both going to Cuba."

Gilead smiled, surprised. "When did you become interested in chess matches?"

"Forget chess. I'm interested in what Zharkov is doing in Cuba. What he's got planned. And there's Kutsenko. If he wants to defect, I want to get him out. Somehow, I don't think you're going to concern yourself with either of those things very much. That's why I'm going to go."

"It'll be dangerous," Gilead said. "Zharkov's going to try to kill me. You're sixty ..."

"Considerably older than that,"
Starcher snapped. "And still alive. If you're worried about taking me along, those are all the credentials I have to offer." His dark eyes were frosty and unyielding.

The Grandmaster nodded slowly. "They're enough."

"Good," Starcher said, still blustering. He lit a cigar, blowing out an enormous, joyful cloud of smoke.

"Maybe you ought to figure out how we're going to get into Cuba," Gilead said.

Starcher sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him languidly. A big grin spread across his face, making him look twenty years younger. "I have."

 

 

S
tarcher permitted the bellhop to carry only
one of his bags up the sumptuous stairway of Miami's Fontainbleau Hotel. It was nearing Christmas, and the hotel was filled, mostly with New Yorkers.

"Pretty fancy," Justin said as Starcher tipped the bellhop and closed the doors on the suite. "Was that a ten you gave him?"

"A hundred. To come in before the maid in the mornings and mess up the beds. It's a weak alibi, but if we need an alibi, it's better than nothing."

"What about your sister? If the CIA gets wind of me and comes sniffing around, she'll talk. She knows I've been staying with you."

Starcher laughed as he hung a few shirts in the closet. "She knows
someone's
been there, but she's too much the lady to ask. Probably thinks I've turned into an old queer. Wear this." He handed Justin a beige linen suit from Harrod's. "And go downstairs and get yourself a haircut and a manicure. I want you to reek of money."

"What for?" Justin asked, fitting the jacket.

"For spending a hundred thousand dollars."

Justin laughed. "What on?"

"A boat," Starcher said.

"I don't know anything about boats."

"You don't have to." He pulled from his jacket pocket a neatly folded photograph from a magazine. It pictured a 38-foot cruiser that looked as if it were flying. "It's an Azimut Electron, Italian made. Pay for it in cash."

"Where are we going to get that much cash?"

Starcher opened a suitcase. It was filled with hundred dollar bills. "Here," he said.

"Are you paying for it yourself?"

Starcher smiled. "You forget. My family's wealthy. And this is the old age I've been saving up for," he said. "Now listen. I want the boat to be painted black and towed thirty miles offshore, directly south of Miami following the Keys, within three days. I'll find someone to drive it by then."

"Painted black? No boat dealer's going to—"

"Pay what you've got to. Most merchants have a healthy respect for cash. They'll do it. Just stay with the boat, understand?" He handed Justin the suitcase and sent him out.

Next, he dressed himself in some threadbare clothes and examined the stubble on his chin. Not bad, he thought. It didn't take much to turn a wealthy old man into a derelict. It had been Riesling's favorite technique. No one ever looked too closely at seedy old vagabonds. Besides, he was only going to look for Saarinen. For the actual contact, he would need a foolproof disguise.

It took him nearly forty-eight hours to locate the black hulk of the
Kronen
. Couched among the sleek Posillipos and Magnums and Couache Motor Yachts that dotted Miami's Bel-Air harbor, the salt-encrusted fishing boat was as obvious as a black eye on a Kabuki dancer.

Starcher wandered near the marina, keeping his cap pulled over his eyes, searching for the captain of the
Kronen.
No one seemed to be on board. Starcher moved closer and knocked on the portholes. No one came. Finally, he stepped aboard the boat.

"Hey!" someone called from atop the rigging on a nearby sailboat. "You, Mr. Bum. Get off my boat, okay? Get out of here."

Starcher looked up. It was Saarinen, a little leaner than Starcher remembered him, but no older. So he still owned the
Kronen.

"Hey, I know you," the Finn said, scrambling down the rigging.

Starcher turned and walked quickly away.

"Wait a minute," Saarinen called, but Starcher was gone.

He could still lose himself in a crowd of five people, Starcher thought with some gratification. There were some students fooling around near the piers, and he moved in among them, then led them all unconsciously near another group, where he was safely out of sight. It had always been something he excelled at—a little thing, the by-product of his work, the way a bank teller can count money with lightning speed, or a librarian can pull out all sorts of trivial information from a lifetime of insignificant research. The CIA men watching Saarinen were all too easy to spot: A deck hand with eyes too wary, a casual stroller with rings of perspiration on his shirt that could only come from hours in the sun and humidity. They were watchers, little men with little jobs, like the KGB watchers who had stood so patiently below his office window in Moscow. They turned when Saarinen called out to him, but they, too, lost him in the crowd. Watchers were the youngsters, easy to dodge. But if they saw him again, they would report the sighting. The disguise for meeting Saarinen head to head would have to be perfect.

 

I
t was nearly dusk by the time Saarinen
got off the gleaming sailboat. He whistled on his way back to the
Kronen
, his steps light on the plank pier.

"Good work," he said, clapping one of the CIA-watchers on the back with his big grime-blackened hands. The watcher pulled away from him indignantly, his flushed face betraying his embarrassment. Saarinen laughed. "My guardian angels, eh?"

The agent walked away. Saarinen lumbered into the hold of the
Kronen
and pulled a bottle of vodka from beneath the galley sink. Since his immigration to America, he'd switched from Korskenkova to easily available Finlandia, but the effect was the same—a wild, fiery ride down a gullet followed by the warm, stomach-prickling glow that always preceded the numb blankness of his nights.

Spies. Who needed them? he thought as he straightened out a sweat-stained Gitane and lit it with a new American Bic lighter. He tilted his wooden chair so that it rested on its two back legs and swung his feet up onto the table. In his right hand was the bottle of vodka; in his left, the cigarette. It was the position he found best for thinking during what little time he had before the Finlandia shut down his brain for the night.

Spies in Finland. Spies on Gogland Island. In the Soviet Union, there was at least one spy per family. And now they were in Miami, too, following him around the Land of the Free.

He belched. "Fuck your mother," he said reflexively.

If he went back to Finland, he'd be thrown in jail again. Or worse. The KGB, very much a presence in Helsinki, had a way of relocating local small-time enemy operatives like Saarinen to the morgue. And the Americans were no better. Shit! If he'd known the bones tossed to him by the CIA fat cats would turn him into a Flying Dutchman, homeless and running forever, he would have stuck to smuggling. It was an easier life. Now, with no crew, no home, and no money to pay for even minor repairs on the
Kronen
, he was as empty-handed as he had been on the day he was born.

He took a swig of the vodka. Well, not completely empty-handed, he thought. At least there would be more Finlandia waiting for him tomorrow. After he was through cleaning Mr. Cohen's sloop. Mr. Cohen, who wouldn't know a nor'easter from a fart.

He smelled something acrid, looked down, saw his shirt was on fire, and slapped it out with a barrage of cursing and a fountain of spilled vodka.

"Fuck your mother!" he screamed. "Fuck
my
mother!"

There was a knock at the door.

"And fuck you!" He threw a vicious kick at the wooden door.

The knocking persisted.

He threw open the door. "Goddamn your eyes!" he bellowed before his visitor came into focus. It was a woman, built like the proverbial American brick outhouse. She was wearing a nurse's cap and had breasts like melons.

"Excuse me," she said throatily, "but I understand you offer charter cruises."

Saarinen tore his eyes away from her chest, sputtered, then took another belt of vodka. "It's dark outside," he managed.

"That's fine with my patient. He can only go out when it's dark. Will you come with me, please?"

Wobbling slightly, he followed her back up to the deck, occasionally sliding his hand along the nurse's heart-shaped backside, a gesture the woman didn't seem to notice.

"He's over there," she said, pointing to a dark figure in a wheelchair on the pier. He looked like an old man, although his face was almost completely swathed in gauze bandages. Only the tip of his nose showed beneath large dark glasses and a wide-brimmed fedora.

"It's a man? Are you sure?" Saarinen said. The cigarette burn on his chest was beginning to blister, and he'd left his bottle down in the hold. Even the nurse's heart-shaped rear couldn't make up for the lack of Finlandia.

"We're from the clinic," she said pertly. "The CPS?"

Saarinen stuck out his tongue and vibrated it toward her left breast.

"The Center for Plastic Surgery," she explained, gently pushing him away. "Mr. Steiner's had a face-lift, and he can't be exposed to the sun, but he wants to go out on the ocean for a couple of hours. I'm trying to find an available boat and captain who'll take him out alone. Mr. Steiner's very self-conscious about his appearance just now."

The old man in the wheelchair gestured impatiently toward Saarinen. "Pah," the Finn said. "I can see why. Tell the old turd it's too late. You come downstairs." He grabbed her arm.

"I'm afraid not," she said prettily, unclasping his fingers. "Won't you come and talk to him? He's such a sweet old dear." She put her arm around Saarinen and half led, half walked him over to the man in the wheelchair.

"So?" Saarinen said. "What do you want?"

The bandaged man opened his wallet slowly and took out a hundred dollar bill. He offered it to Saarinen with shaking, arthritic fingers.

Saarinen shook his head. "It's too dark to go out to sea," he shouted, because he assumed the old man was deaf, and also because he enjoyed shouting. "There is nothing to see."

Mr. Steiner proffered another hundred dollar bill.

"I've been working all day. I'm tired. Go home, understand?"

For the third time the clawlike fingers fished into the wallet. This time they came up with three bills, which he added to the other two. The money fluttered in the faceless man's outstretched hand for several seconds before Saarinen snatched it away.

"Steiner, eh? Rich old Jew, yes?"

The mummified head bobbed once, slowly.

"Come on, then," Saarinen said with a sigh. "There's no moon, but maybe your friend will oblige us with a view." He rubbed the nurse's thigh abstractedly. She giggled and kicked up the stop on Mr. Steiner's wheelchair.

"Can you lift him?"

Saarinen made a disgusted sound and spat abundantly on the pier before getting on board. Then he reached down and scooped the old man out of the chair. "Someone your age should not be concerned with a youthful face," Saarinen grumbled. "Even if it gets you what you want, you wouldn't know what to do with it."

He set the old man down and heaved the wheelchair on board. "Okay," he said, panting. "Now you." He held out his hand for the nurse.

"Oh, I have to be back at work. I'll meet you back here in two hours. All right, Mr. Steiner?"

The bandaged man nodded again.

"Fuck your mother," Saarinen muttered.

 

H
e left Mr. Steiner on the starboard side of the deck
, in utter darkness, as he polished off another half-bottle of Finlandia at the helm while motoring out of the sheltered harbor. After twenty minutes, Saarinen came outside. There was no moon, no stars. "Beautiful night," he said. "Lots to see, eh?"

"What direction are we traveling?" Mr. Steiner asked. It was the first time Saarinen had heard the man speak. For some reason, the voice surprised him. He hadn't expected normal male sounds to issue from the decrepit old body and the bandaged, featureless face.

"North," Saarinen said.

"Change your course. Head due south."

"The view won't be any different." Saarinen smiled, then frowned. "You are sick? You wish to go back to the plastic clinic? Here, I will help you to lie down." He slid his arms around Mr. Steiner. The old man pushed him away.

"Just change your course."

Saarinen rushed to the helm, cursing the melon-breasted nurse for refusing to come on board. "I will return with a corpse, and then the Americans will execute me for murder." He poured some vodka down his throat as the
Kronen
turned dramatically in midocean to face the other direction.