Grandmaster (42 page)

He nodded to his companions, pointedly ignoring the KGB men standing near, and said, "This is Justin Gilead, the most brilliant American player ever.”

"Thank you," Justin said. "Perhaps Fischer might have something to say about that."

"Ooof, Fischer. A
patzer.
You could give him pawn and move," Kutsenko said, and he and Justin shared a smile over the joke. Fischer's reputation as the greatest chess player the world had ever produced was so solid and stable as to be invulnerable. It could be joked about because it was beyond argument.

"It is one of the losses of my life that I never played Fischer," Justin said. "And yours too, I suppose."

Justin knew that the KGB men behind Kutsenko were straining to catch the conversation. He mentioned casually that he had just seen Kutsenko's latest proposals in the Semi-Slav defense in
Shakmatni
.

As he expected, it touched off a spate of comments and observations by the chess players and their seconds, each with an opinion, each willing to express it loudly and at any length. And because chess players used an algebraic notation to describe the 64 squares on a chessboard, each square being designated by a letter and number from A-I in the lower left corner of the board to H-8 at the upper right corner, the conversation must have sounded like computer-generated madness to non-chess players.

"The correct move to maintain pressure on the center," Kutsenko said, "was bishop B-seven. It was all lost with F-five because then knight G-five, H-six, rook E-four and wins."

"Unless," said Ribitnov, the youngest Russian, "D-six. D-six will hold the middle and force the exchange, and black stands better."

"No," Victor Keverin interjected. "D-six loses to D-four, preparing E-five."

The conversation raged back and forth, and, as Justin had expected it would, it soon bored the KGB men, who stepped back from the little cluster of chess players and began talking among themselves. Lena Kutsenko took her husband's glass and walked over to a waiter to exchange it for a fresh glass of bottled water.

Justin took a few steps away from the group. Kutsenko stepped forward to speak to him.

"What do you think, Justin?" he asked.

"I think that in Havana, the sun is hot," the Grandmaster said softly. He studied Kutsenko's face. He was about to finish the identifying password when the Russian chess master's face seemed to drain of color and his eyes became frightened. He looked up at Justin imploringly, then away again. Justin followed Kutsenko's gaze toward the ballroom's main entrance. There stood Alexander Zharkov.

Justin felt his heart leap. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. Zharkov had not changed. There might have been a little more gray in his hair, but he was still husky and muscular his face still young and unlined, the lizard-lidded eyes still cold and murderous. The Russian's own face paled when he saw Justin Gilead staring at him. Their eyes locked for a frozen moment. Then Zharkov looked away and started across the room.

Justin felt Kutsenko move back slightly from him, as if to be nearer the other Russian players and seconds. Perhaps only a handful of people in Russia knew what Zharkov did, but that he was a powerful man was evident. The KGB bodyguards abruptly halted their bored conversation and moved back up among the members of the Russian team. One positioned himself between Gilead and Kutsenko. The Russian champion withdrew another half-step.

Justin wondered if Kutsenko had understood Justin's message to him. Did he know that Justin was the man who would arrange his defection to the United States? He looked at Kutsenko, but the man was so obviously frightened by Zharkov that no emotion but fear could be seen on his face. Then Kutsenko turned back to his wife and spoke to her, and Justin remembered what Starcher had told him about Riesling's death and Corfus's final conversation in the Moscow hospital. It was only a guess that the statement about Havana's weather and sugar crop was a password to identify himself to a potential defector. Riesling had been dying when he said it. It could have been nothing but the delirious babbling of a dying man, meaning nothing. And Corfus's analysis might also have meant less than nothing. The fact was that no one knew for sure whether Kutsenko was a potential defector or not.

It was like so much of field intelligence work. Guesses, wishes, hopes. No evidence. No realities. Only suppositions and maybes and let's-give-it-a-trys.

As Zharkov walked toward the group, Justin's heart still pounded. At last, after all these years of waiting, his soul had been freed. He was allowed to kill this man who had killed so much of Justin's life. The images flashed, unbidden, unwanted, into his mind: the once peaceful temple at Rashimpur; the great tree charred and dead; Tagore bound to it by wires, dead; the other monks dead. He saw himself bayoneted and thrown into the cold lake, dead. He saw Yva, the Polish girl, her head severed, her village burning. He saw himself in a Polish grave, the earth suffocating him, clawing his way through the cold damp soil like a mindless animal of the night.

Zharkov always walked with death. He was the Prince of Death, and even though, in his deepest heart, Justin did not believe it, he accepted Tagore's word: that somehow Zharkov had been born to inflict evil on the world and that Justin had been born to fight back.

But he had lost his faith. Perhaps once he had believed that he was special, a man chosen by the gods, but not any longer. Now he was just a tired man, tired beyond his years, who still remembered a few tricks of his childhood and hoped that they would be enough to allow him to kill this lifelong enemy and then to die himself.

For a moment, as Zharkov approached, Justin thought of waiting until the man came into reach, and then stretching out his long, powerful fingers and tearing out Zharkov's throat. It would be easy. And then he could die.

He could complete the circle, and he could join Tagore and the others of Rashimpur in death.

They would know their mistake; they would not greet him any longer as Patanjali, as the Wearer of the Blue Hat, but they might greet him as a good man who had tried to do his duty, and perhaps they could make room for him in that far-off place in which their spirits dwelt.

But there was duty. Duty, as Andrew Starcher would have it, with a capital letter, absolute and inviolate. He had given his word to Starcher. He would keep it.

There would be time to kill Zharkov. There would be time because Justin had now been freed, and the earth was too small a place for one such as Zharkov to hide from him and the vengeance he would exact.

Zharkov passed him without a glance and stopped in front of Kutsenko. The Russian champion said, "Good to see you, Colonel. We are pleased that you will be playing with us." Zharkov grunted, and Kutsenko looked past him, toward Justin, and said, "There is someone you should meet."

Zharkov turned and faced Gilead. Even though Kutsenko had taken his arm and was starting to move toward Justin, Zharkov stood planted as firmly as an oak tree.

"We have met already," he said coldly.

"Yes," Justin said. "Many times." His soft voice was chilling. "The colonel and I are old friends."

There was a long silence. When Kutsenko saw that neither man would step forward to offer the other his hand, he released his grip on Zharkov's elbow. "Have you two played before?" he asked timidly, speaking to a space between the two of them.

"Yes," said Gilead.

"No," said Zharkov.

Justin smiled. "Never a real game. Until now. This will be the first, won't it, Colonel?"

"The first and the last," Zharkov said.

Then he walked away to find a cocktail waiter, and Justin returned to the American contingent.

Later, Justin found himself standing next to Lena Kutsenko near a small podium from which the chairman of the Cuban chess federation was reading the schedule of games for the next four days. Dr. Kutsenko's husband was on the other side of the room, surrounded by KGB men. Zharkov had already left.

Justin learned that he would play Ribitnov, the young Russian, the next day. On Thursday, it would be Victor Keverin, and on Friday, Zharkov. On Saturday, the final day of the match, Justin would play Kutsenko.

When Dr. Kutsenko heard the pairings, she said to Gilead with a warm smile, "They've obviously saved the best for last. My husband is a great admirer of yours."

"Thank you," Justin responded in Russian. "Is this your first trip to Havana?"

"Yes."

"How do you like it?" Justin asked.

"Sunshine in January is delightful," she said. "But I suppose it is very hot in Havana in the summertime."

Justin leaned closer and responded, "But it's good for the sugar crop."

They had been standing side by side, politely watching the bald sweating Cuban read from a long congratulatory message on the match from various chess dignitaries. Lena Kutsenko turned quickly to look at Justin.

"What did you say?" she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

"I said, in Havana, the sun is hot, but it's good for the sugar crop." Her eyes searched his face, and he nodded slightly to her. He saw one of the KGB men approaching them and Kutsenko looking anxiously in their direction.

"I'm your man," Justin said quickly and softly. "We will talk later."

She nodded and left a moment later with the KGB man who steered her back to her husband and the rest of the Russian contingent.

After the announcements, Justin spent some time with the other American team members, then walked up the stairs to his second-floor room. His first game was scheduled for 1:00
p.m.
the next day.

 

Z
harkov answered the soft knock on his door.
One of the Russians from the ballroom stood there. He was a gorilla-shouldered man with no discernible waistline. In his light tan suit, he had the configuration of a cardboard box. He stepped inside the room.

"He has gone up to his room, Comrade Colonel."

"Whom did he talk to?"

"To Kutsenko earlier. To Dr. Kutsenko later tonight."

"Did you overhear what was said?"

"No. I could not get close enough. But he said something that seemed to surprise her. I could tell by her face."

"Very good. Tell your men to be very careful with the Kutsenkos. Keep a sharp eye on them."

"Yes sir, Colonel."

"Gilead's second. This Harry Andrew. Was there any sign of him?"

"No, sir," the KGB man said. "Should we do anything special with Gilead?"

"No. I will take care of him."

When the man left, Zharkov returned to the small desk in the room where he had been jotting notes. It had not been necessary for him to be in the ballroom to hear the pairings, because he already knew them. He had arranged to play Gilead on Friday, the match's third day. That was the night Castro would come to welcome the players officially, and Zharkov knew that the Grandmaster, no matter what arrangements were made with the Kutsenkos, would not leave before he had met Zharkov across the chessboard. And until Castro came, Zharkov would make sure that the Kutsenkos were guarded at all times so that Gilead could not attempt to spirit them out of Cuba. Then he would deal with Gilead.

A good plan, he told himself. It was neat, and it was economical. It would work.

But who the hell was Harry Andrew?

 

 

"
T
he place is crawling with KGB people,"
Justin said as he turned on the radio loudly. As he spoke, he removed his tuxedo jacket, went to the writing table in the corner of the room, and scrawled on a piece of letter paper, "I made contact with Lena Kutsenko."

Starcher read the note, nodded, and handed it back. "What did you say?" he whispered.

Justin wrote, "Gave password. Said we'll talk later. Kutsenkos under close watch all evening."

Starcher took an ashtray from an end table and tore Justin's note into confetti-size pieces. When he was done, he rose, went to the bathroom, and flushed the pieces of paper away. He came out and said, "You'd better get some rest. You're playing tomorrow?"

"Yes. One o'clock."

"Who?"

"Ribitnov. He's a very good young Russian. I get Zharkov on Friday and Kutsenko on Saturday."

"Maybe, Justin, we're going to win all our games," Starcher said.

"Only one of them matters to me," the Grandmaster said.

Later, Starcher asked, "Did you see Zharkov tonight?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"I didn't kill him," Justin said.

 

 

J
ustin sensed that someone was watching him
when he left the second-floor room to go downstairs for a late breakfast.

He let the stairwell door close behind him, then stopped and waited. A few seconds later, he heard a faint knocking and opened the door carefully.

A small, dark-haired man in a flowered shirt and jeans was standing in front of the door to his room. His hands were folded in front of him in the manner of someone praying in church.

The door opened, and the man said,
"Dénde está Luis?"

Justin heard Starcher say, "Sorry, you've got the wrong room." The door closed, and the man came down the hallway as Justin stepped into the hall. The man was buttoning his shirt.

When he saw Justin, he seemed to hesitate for a split second, then smiled casually in the manner of one stranger passing another in a strange place.

Justin smiled back, but when he drew abreast of the man, he reached out his right hand and grabbed the clump of muscles between the man's neck and shoulder. The man groaned as Justin squeezed. His knees buckled. Justin reached his other hand around and tore the man's shirt open. A small camera was attached to the man's chest with strips of adhesive tape. Justin ripped the camera loose and pocketed it.

"Tell your boss no pictures," he said coldly in Spanish. "Now, go."

The man ran off without argument and vanished into the stairwell. When Justin let himself into the room with a key, Starcher was at the window, shaving while looking out over Havana's broad boulevards. He turned at the sound of Justin's entrance.