“Mordecai was trying to buy these rare and valuable chess pieces in behalf of a museum—when Llewellyn found out about it and started mucking up the deal. Mordecai suspects that Llewellyn bribed Saul to find out more about them. When Saul threatened to reveal his duplicity, Llewellyn panicked and hired someone to bump him off!” She was very pleased with this explanation.
“Mordecai is either misinformed or deliberately misleading you,” I told her. “Llewellyn had nothing to do with Saul’s death. Solarin did it. He told me so himself. Solarin is here in Algeria.”
Lily had an oyster halfway to her lips, but she dropped it in the couscous pot. Reaching for the wine, she took a big slug. “Try that one more time,” she said.
So I told her. The whole story, just as I’d pieced it together, holding back nothing. I recounted how Llewellyn had asked me to get him the pieces—how the fortune-teller had hidden a message in her prophecy—how Mordecai had written to reveal he knew the fortune-teller—how Solarin had shown up in Algiers and said Saul killed Fiske and tried to kill him. All because of the pieces. I told her I’d figured out there was a formula, just as she’d thought. It was hidden in the chess service everyone was looking for. I concluded by describing my visit to Llewellyn’s pal the carpet trader—and the latter’s tale of the mysterious Mokhfi Mokhtar of the Casbah.
When I’d finished, Lily was standing there with her mouth open—and she hadn’t touched a bite. “Why haven’t you told me any of this before?” she wanted to know.
Carioca was lying on his back with his paws in the air, acting sick. I scooped him up and put him in the sink, trickling a little water so he could drink.
“I didn’t know most of this until I got here,” I told Lily. “The only reason I’m telling you now is because there’s something you can help me with that I can’t do myself. It seems there’s a chess game going on, with other people making the moves. I haven’t a clue how the game is played, but you’re an expert. I need to know, in order to find these pieces.”
“You can’t be serious,” said Lily. “You mean a real chess game? With people as the pieces? So when somebody gets killed—it’s like wiping a piece off the board?”
She went over to the sink and rinsed her hands, splashing Carioca with water. Tucking him still damp beneath her arm, she wandered off toward the living room, and I followed with the wine and glasses. She seemed to have forgotten all about food.
“You know,” she said, still moving about the room, “if we could figure out who the pieces were, we might be able to work this out. I can look at any board, even in the middle of a game, and reconstruct the moves so far. For example, I think we could safely assume that Saul and Fiske were pawns.…”
“And you and I as well,” I agreed. Lily’s eyes were glowing like those of a hound with the fox’s scent. I’d rarely seen her so excited.
“Llewellyn and Mordecai might be pieces—”
“And Hermanold,” I added quickly. “He was the one who shot at our car!”
“We can’t forget Solarin,” she said. “He’s a player for sure. You know, if we could go over this carefully, re-creating the events, I think I could lay out the moves on a board and come up with something.”
“Maybe you should stay here tonight,” I suggested. “Sharrif might send his boys by to arrest you once he has proof you’re really here illegally. I could smuggle you into town tomorrow. My client Kamel can pull strings to keep you out of prison. Meanwhile we can work on the puzzle.”
We stayed up half the night reconstructing events, moving chess pieces around Lily’s pegboard set—using a matchstick for the missing White Queen. But Lily was frustrated.
“If only we had just a little more data,” she complained as we watched the morning sky turn to lavender.
“Actually, I know a way we might get some,” I admitted. “I’ve a very close friend who’s been helping me with this puzzle—when I can reach him. He’s a computer wizard who’s played lots of chess, too. He has a friend in Algiers with high connections—wife of the late Dutch consul. I’m hoping to see her tomorrow. You could go with me, if we get your visa cleared up.”
So we agreed and pulled down the sheets of our beds to catch a little sleep. I didn’t guess that in a few hours something would happen that would transform me from an unwilling participant into a major player in the game.
La Darse was the quay at the northwest end of the port of Algiers, where the fishing boats were moored. It was a long rocky mole that connected the mainland to that small island for which Algiers was named—Al-Djezair.
The ministry parking lot was located there, but Kamel’s car was missing, so I pulled the big blue Corniche into his slot, leaving a note on the dash. I felt a bit conspicuous about putting a pastel touring car amid all those sleek black limousines, but it was better than leaving it on the streets.
Lily and I went along the waterfront on the Boulevard Anatole France and crossed the Avenue Ernesto Che Guevara to the Escaliers that led to the Mosquée de la Pêcheur. Lily was only a third of the way up the steps when she sat down on the cold flat stones, dripping with sweat, though it was still the cool of the morning.
“You’re trying to kill me,” she informed me with a gasp. “What kind of place is this? These streets go straight up. They ought to bulldoze the whole thing and start from scratch.”
“I find it charming,” I told her, pulling her up by the arm. Carioca was lying bedraggled on the steps beside her, his tongue hanging out. “Besides, there’s no place to park near the Casbah. So get a move on.”
After much complaining and many rest stops, we reached the top where the curving street Bab el Oued separated the Fisherman’s Mosque from the Casbah. To our left was the Place des Martyrs, a wide plaza full of old men on park benches, where the flower stall was located. Lily plopped down on the first empty bench.
“I’m looking for Wahad the tour guide,” I told the surly flower vendor. He looked me up and down and waggled his hand. A dirty little boy came running up, dressed like a ragtag street urchin, a cigarette reeking of hemp dangling from between his colorless lips.
“Wahad, a client seeks you,” the flower vendor told the little boy. I did a double take.
“You’re the tour guide?” I said. The filthy little creature couldn’t have been older than ten but was already wizened and decrepit. Not to mention riddled with lice. He scratched himself, licked his fingers to pinch out his cigarette, and tucked it behind his ear.
“Fifty dinars is my minimum for the Casbah,” he told me. “For a hundred, I’ll show you the city.”
“I don’t want a tour,” I said, taking his ragged shirt gingerly by the sleeve to pull him aside. “I’m looking for Mrs. Renselaas—Minnie Renselaas, wife of the late Dutch consul. A friend told me—”
“I know who she is,” he said, squinting one eye to check me out.
“I’ll pay you to take me there—fifty dinars, did you say?” I was scrounging in my bag for money.
“No one goes to see the lady, unless she told me so,” he said. “You got an invitation or something?”
An invitation? I felt like a fool, but I pulled out Nim’s telex and showed it to him, thinking that might do the trick. He looked at it for a long while, holding it in different directions. Finally he said:
“I can’t read. What does it say?” So I had to explain to the disgusting child that a friend of mine had sent it in code. I told him what I thought it said: Get thee to Fisherman’s Steps. Meet Minnie. Critical.
“That’s all?” he asked me, as if this conversation were an everyday event. “There’s not another word? Like a secret word?”
“Joan of Arc,” I told him. “It said Joan of Arc.”
“That’s not the right word,” he told me, pulling out his cigarette again and lighting up. I glanced across the plaza at Lily on her bench. She returned a look that said I was crazy. I racked my brain, trying to think of another Tchaikovsky piece that had nine letters—clearly that was the clue—but I
couldn’t. Wahad was still looking at the paper in his hand.
“I can read numbers,” he told me at last. “That’s a phone number there.” I looked down and saw that Nim had written seven numbers. I was very excited.
“It’s her phone number!” I said. “We could call her and ask.…”
“No,” said Wahad, looking mysterious, “that’s not her phone number—it’s mine.”
“Yours!” I cried. Lily and the flower vendor were both looking at us now, and Lily stood up, starting to wander toward us. “But doesn’t that prove …”
“It proves that somebody knows I can find the lady,” he told me. “But I won’t, unless you know the right word.”
Stubborn little bugger. I was cursing Nim in my mind for being so cryptic, when suddenly I thought of it. Another Tchaikovsky opera that had nine letters—at least, it did if you said it in French. Lily had just reached us when I grabbed Wahad by his collar.
“Dame Pique!” I cried. “The Queen of Spades!”
Wahad smiled at me with his crooked teeth.
“That’s it, lady,” he told me. “The Black Queen.” Crushing his cigarette on the ground, he motioned for us to cross the Bab el Oued and follow him into the Casbah.
Wahad took us up and down steep streets in the Casbah that I never would have discovered on my own. Lily was huffing and puffing behind us, and I finally picked up Carioca and stuffed him in my shoulder bag so he’d stop whining. After half an hour of winding through tortuous twists and turns, we came at last to a cul-de-sac with high brick walls that shut out all the light from above. Wahad paused for Lily to catch up, and I suddenly felt a cold chill run up my spine. I felt I’d been here before. Then I realized this was like my dream that night at Nim’s when I’d wakened in a cold sweat. I was terrified. I wheeled on Wahad and grabbed him by his shoulder.
“Where are you taking us?” I cried.
“Follow me,” he said, and opened a heavy wooden door buried deep in the brick wall. I glanced at Lily and shrugged, then we stepped inside. There was a dark stairwell that looked as if it led down into a dungeon.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I called after Wahad, who’d already disappeared into the gloom.
“How do we know we’re not being kidnapped?” Lily whispered behind me as we started down the stairs. Her hand was on my shoulder, and Carioca whimpered softly in my bag. “I’ve heard blond women are sold at very high prices in the white slave trade.…”
They’d get double for her, based on volume, I thought. Aloud, I said, “Shut up and stop shoving.” But I was afraid. I knew I could never find my way out of here again.
Wahad was waiting at the bottom, where I collided with him in the dark. Lily was still hanging on me as we heard Wahad turn the lock of the door. The door opened a crack, emitting a dim light.
He pulled me inside a large dark cellar where a dozen or more men sat about on the cushioned floor, playing dice. A few looked up with bleary eyes as we moved through the smoke-filled room. But no one tried to stop us.
“What’s that ghastly smell?” asked Lily in hushed tones. “It’s like decomposing flesh.”
“Hashish,” I whispered back, glancing at the large water-filled bongs that sat about the room, at the men sucking on hoses and rolling the ivory dice.
Good God, where was Wahad taking us? We followed him through the room to a door on the other side and went up a sloped and darkened passage into the back of a small shop. The shop was completely filled with birds—jungle birds on branched perches moving about in cages everywhere.
Only one large vine-covered window let in light from the outside. Glass droplets of chandeliers cast glittering gold, green, and blue prisms of color against the walls and across the veiled faces and hair of the half-dozen women who moved about the room. Like the men below, these women ignored us as if we were part of the wallpaper.
Wahad pulled me through the maze of trees and perches to a small archway at the far side of the shop, which opened onto a narrow alley. It was completely enclosed with no entrance but the way we’d come, high walls of mossy brick surrounding the little square, cobbled pavement, and a heavy door in the wall across from us.
Wahad crossed the enclosed court, pulling a rope that hung beside the door. It took a long time before anything happened. I glanced at Lily, who was still hanging on to me. She’d caught her breath, but her face was deadly white, as I’m sure was mine. My uneasiness was turning to terror.
A man’s face appeared at the grate in the door. He looked at Wahad without speaking. Then his eyes moved to Lily and me where we huddled across the court. Even Carioca was silent. Wahad muttered something, and though we were twenty feet away, I could hear what he said.
“Mokhfi Mokhtar,” he whispered. “I have brought her the woman.”
We passed through the massive wooden door to stand in a small brick-walled formal garden. The floor was a pattern of enameled tiles in various designs. None seemed to be repeated. Soft fountains gurgled in the spotty foliage. Birds cooed and warbled in the speckled half-light. At the back of the court was a bank of many-paned French windows draped with vines. Through these windows I glimpsed a room richly furnished with Moroccan carpets, Chinese urns, and intricate tooled leathers and carved woods.
Wahad slipped away through the gate behind us. Lily whirled, crying out, “Don’t let that little creep escape—we’ll never get out of here!”
But he’d already vanished. The man who’d let us in was gone as well, so the two of us were left alone in the court, where the air was dark and cool and the mingled scent of colognes and sweet grasses pervaded the air. I felt in a daze as the fountains splashed musically, echoing off the mossy walls.
I noticed a shape moving behind the French windows. It flickered past the heavy drape of jasmine and wisteria. Lily clutched my hand. We stood beside the fountains and watched the silvery form as it moved through an archway into the garden, floating through the half-green light—a slim, beautiful woman whose translucent robes seemed to whisper as she moved. Her soft hair fluttered about her half-veiled face like the silvered wings of birds. When she spoke to us, her voice was as sweet and low as cool water passing over smooth stones.
“I am Minnie Renselaas,” she said, standing before us like a wraith in the shimmering light. But even before she removed the opaque silver veil that masked her face, I knew who she was. It was the fortune-teller.
THE DEATH OF KINGS
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed—
All murdered; for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court … and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
—Richard II
William Shakespeare
PARIS
JULY 10, 1793
Mireille stood beneath the leafy chestnut trees at the entrance to Jacques-Louis David’s courtyard and peered through the iron gates. In the long black haik, her face obscured by the muslin veil, she looked like a typical model for the famous painter’s exotic canvases. More importantly, no one could recognize her in this attire. Dusty and exhausted from her arduous journey, she tugged the cord and heard the bell echo from within.
Less than six weeks ago, she’d received the abbess’s letter filled with urgency and admonishment. It had taken long enough to reach her, having been sent first to Corsica, then forwarded by the only member of Napoleone and Elisa’s family who hadn’t fled that isle—their gnarled old grandmother, Angela-Maria di Pietra-Santa.
The letter ordered Mireille to France at once:
In learning of your absence from Paris, I feared not only for you, but for the fate of that which God placed within your guardia
nship—a responsibility I discover you’ve spurned. I am in despair for those of your Sisters who may have fled to that city seeking your aid when you were not there to help them. You understand my meaning.
I remind you that we face powerful adversaries who will halt at nothing to achieve their ends—who’ve organized their opposition while we’ve been blown by the winds of fate. The time has come to take the reins into our hands, turn the tide again in our favor, and reunite what fate has torn asunder.
I urge you to Paris at once. By my direction, someone you know was sent there seeking you—with specific instructions regarding your mission, which is critical.
My heart goes out to you in the loss of your cherished cousin. May God go with you in this task.
There was no date on the letter and no signature. Mireille recognized the abbess’s handwriting, but she had no idea how long ago she’d written. Though stung by the accusation that she’d shirked her duty, Mireille had grasped the true meaning of the abbess’s letter. Other pieces were in jeopardy, other nuns were in danger—from the same evil forces that had destroyed Valentine. She must go back to France.
Shahin agreed to accompany her as far as the sea. But her month-old son, Chariot, was too young to make the arduous trip. At Djanet, Shahin’s people vowed to care for the child until her return, since they already regarded the red-haired infant as the prophet that was foretold. After a painful farewell, Mireille left him in the arms of the wet nurse and departed.
For twenty-five days they crossed the Deban Ubari, the western rim of the Libyan Desert, bypassing the mountains and treacherous dunes in a shortcut to the sea at Tripoli. There Shahin put her onto a twin-masted schooner bound for France. These ships, the fastest on earth, sailed into the wind on open sea at fourteen knots, making the course from Tripoli to Saint-Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire in a mere ten days. Mireille was back in France.
Now, as she stood before David’s gate, begrimed and exhausted from travel, she looked through the bars across that courtyard she’d fled less than a year ago. But it seemed a hundred years since that afternoon she and Valentine had scaled the garden walls, giggling with excitement at their boldness, and gone into the Cordeliers to meet Sister Claude. Forcing these thoughts from her mind, Mireille tugged the bell-cord again.
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