Pawn (Ironclad Bodyguards 1)

by Molly Joseph

  “You had a nightmare, Grace,” he said in his same firm-but-understanding voice. “The house is wired with an alarm. It would have gone off if someone had broken in. It’s still early morning. You had probably just fallen asleep.”

  “You must think I’m crazy.” She tried to sound calm and self-deprecating but her voice cracked, ruining the effect.

  “I think you had a nightmare, or maybe a panic attack.” He took the blanket off the edge of her bed and wrapped it around her. “Can you sit here a minute?” he asked. “I’m not dressed. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “You don’t have to put on your suit.”

  “Not a suit. Just a shirt.”

  Oh, a shirt. At the door, he turned around again and held up a finger. “I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded. Terror and memories had emptied her out and left her feeling hollow. He was back before she could fall deeper into the danger of remembering those voices, the pain, the shock. He’d thrown on a baggy sweatshirt over his sleep pants.

  “Okay?” he asked. “Are you feeling any better?”

  She stared back at him. I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. Whatever it was, it wasn’t “better.”

  “Do you think you can sleep?” He leaned down and adjusted her pillow. “You should rest. Everything’s fine, I promise.”

  She lay back only because his gaze was so expectant. If he left the room, she’d follow him. She was still too jittery to lie alone in the dark. “Something happened to me once,” she said. She felt like she had to explain her behavior, but she didn’t know how. “In Russia. There were these guys...”

  He sat on the edge of her bed and pulled the blankets closer around her. “You don’t have to tell me. I know.”

  “You do?”

  “I read the police report.” He couldn’t quite hold her gaze, or maybe she was the one who looked away. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said.

  She stared at his heather gray sweatshirt, emblazoned with a blurry NYU, since she wasn’t wearing her glasses. “I thought I heard someone, that’s why I freaked out. I was afraid it was going to happen again.”

  “I won’t let it happen again. Nothing like that is ever going to happen to you again.”

  She wanted to believe him. He was very strong. He’d been a soldier in the Army and everything. “I feel afraid all the time,” she said, her dirty little secret.

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?” Did it show in her face? She didn’t want to look fearful and weak to her opponents. She reached for her glasses on the bedside table, and the NYU on his sweatshirt came into focus. “I don’t want anyone to know how afraid I feel. How did you know?”

  He gave her a sympathetic look. “I just pulled you out from under a bed.”

  In the half-light his eyes were earnest and expressive, and so concerned.

  “Did you ever feel afraid when you were in the Army?” she asked. “Did you have to fight in any battles?”

  Some hardness flashed in his gaze, some haunted pang. She put a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked that.”

  “No, it’s okay. Yes, I went to war when I was in the Army. I was in battles and fire fights. And I was deathly afraid, believe me. I know what it feels like to be afraid all the time. But you know what they say—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Everything I dealt with in the Army made me a better, stronger person. I learned a lot of skills that help me keep people safe.”

  “And you learned Arabic in the Army.”

  “Yes.”

  That amazed her, that he’d learned that complex, exotic language. “Will you speak some for me?”

  For a moment she thought he’d say no, but then he spoke a series of phrases that rose and fell in a foreign cadence. His lips moved differently than when he spoke English; his face moved differently. He seemed all around different as he spoke the tangle of words.

  “What did you say?” she asked when he finished.

  “I said, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ more or less.”

  She regarded him in disbelief. “That was longer than three words.”

  “It’s not an exact translation.”

  “What’s the whole thing?”

  He rubbed his lips. His eyes met hers. “‘May courage bloom in your heart and vanquish the souls of thine enemies, and may your victory cry be the roar of a thousand lions.’” He looked away and started pulling at her blankets again. “Do you want me to stay here until you fall asleep?”

  Her fingers curled into her palms. Her lips trembled. She didn’t know why. If she had courage in her heart she could have said No, I’ll be okay. But she wasn’t okay. She still shivered, even under the blankets. “Do you mind staying a little longer?” she asked. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s perfectly okay.”

  His feet stayed on the floor but he moved closer so she could lean into his bulk and his warmth. He smelled faintly of soap or cologne. Maybe it was the clean NYU sweatshirt he’d just put on. They sat there a few moments in silence, then he turned his head. “Listen.”

  She turned her head too. He got up and opened the bathroom door, and stood very still. There was the noise, a small rustle and a faint thump, like a footfall.

  “Is that what you heard?” he asked.

  She nodded, feeling foolish. It was exactly what she’d heard, but in the dark, alone, it had sounded a lot more like someone coming to murder her.

  “Unfamiliar sounds,” he said. “You know what we should do?” He closed the door and came back to join her on the bed. “We should sit here and listen for all the noises this house makes. Then you’ll know what’s normal and what’s cause for alarm. Would you like to do that?”

  She nodded. “That seems like a good idea.”

  He leaned over and clicked off the bedside lamp. “It’s easier to hear in the dark. Easier to concentrate.”

  Easier for him, maybe. She was still distracted by the erratic thumping of her heart. She pushed up her glasses and leaned back against the headboard.

  “Take slow breaths,” he said. “Listen.”

  She did what he said, and drew slow breaths in and out. She listened to the hushed noises of the Huvilakatu house. She grew aware of his breathing, but more aware of his closeness, his arm against her, and his shoulder.

  “That’s a car,” he said at the sound of a distant hum. “You hear it?”

  She nodded. In the silence, the pipes thumped again. “These are row houses,” he explained. “People are waking up and using their bathrooms. You may hear people walking around, or talking. You’ll eventually come to know their voices, or you may stop hearing them altogether. It’s just a matter of habituation.”

  “What’s that?” she asked. “Habituation?”

  “Getting used to something.”

  She listened for more noises. She thought she might have heard a faint voice outside, and the crunch-squeak of boots in snow. Maybe she was just imagining it, because she was getting pretty tired.

  Next she knew, he was nudging her awake. Thin light streamed through the door, and her head felt heavy from sleep. “Sorry to wake you,” he said, “but it’s almost one. You should get up now, so you can work your way onto the local time.”

  His hair was wet, and he smelled like he’d just taken a shower. “Oh,” she mumbled. “Okay. Yeah. I probably should.”

  “It’s up to you. I’m going to head down and see what they have in the kitchen.” He started to leave, then turned back. “I made some room on the table out there for your chess board, if you want to set it up. With the window it’s the sunniest place in the house, at least for a few hours a day.”

  Maybe he does light dusting, Zeke had said. He definitely did panic attack duty, wake up calls, and general thoughtful acts. She wondered if all bodyguards were like that, or just this one.

  She wondered if he’d stayed beside her the whole time, or only until she fell asleep. She wondered if he was the one who
’d taken off her glasses and placed them on the bedside table. She was too embarrassed to ask.

  Chapter Four: Seconds

  Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe. —Indian proverb

  Sam spent the next couple days scoping out their area of Helsinki. He walked through neighborhoods and pinned down transportation, studied the local faces, and listened to the language. He introduced himself to the neighbors by making up things he needed. An egg. Some milk or sugar. They were all nice blond-haired, blue-eyed people, eager to welcome the short-term renters. He explained that they were students doing sociological research on a university grant. Take that, chess spies.

  His client got used to Helsinki in her own way: she sat at the table on the third floor and stared at her chess board for hours. Every once in a while she’d stand up and stretch, and walk to the window to look out at the harbor. There were no more panic attacks, no more screaming from under the bed. By the time her seconds showed up on the third day, she seemed calm, focused, and ready to work.

  Sam was introduced to each of the three men as they arrived. Krishna was an elderly Indian given to long, meditative silences, while Renzo was an effusive Argentinian of fifty years or so. The first day, Renzo took over the kitchen and proceeded to cook in an efficiently cheerful way, keeping everyone fed when he wasn’t plotting about chess.

  Fredrik, who’d come by boat from Stockholm, was the last of her seconds. He was younger than Sam, closer to Grace’s age. He was athletic, compactly built, assertive and well-spoken—the epitome of capable Swedish smarminess. He didn’t cook like Renzo, and he didn’t possess Krishna’s Zen-like calmness. Fredrik talked loudly and organized things, and he stared too hard at Grace. Sam hated him right away.

  By the end of the third day, there were chess boards set up on all three levels of the house. Some were work chess boards, some were play chess boards. The work ones were used to reenact matches and plot strategies during twice-daily sessions. The play ones were used for impromptu games between the four chess grandmasters. Much ribbing and trash-talking went on, in a mish-mash of accents.

  Sam observed all of this as an outsider. He hadn’t even brought his Chess For Dummies book. Why bother? He was light years behind their level of expertise. They sat at dinner each night and spoke a language of letters, numbers, gambits, strategies, and endgames as hard to follow as the complicated Finnish tongue.

  “Did you hear about the game Linzer played in Vienna?” asked Fredrik. “King’s Indian defense, fourth and sixth with knights.”

  Renzo came to the table with a platter of seared churrasco in chimichurri sauce. “It wasn’t a perfect game,” he said. “Not even close. His twenty-fourth move with the queen was a mistake. At least, it was unsound.”

  “Ivanchuk and Yusupov played that same opening in Brussels in 1991,” Krishna intoned, helping himself to grilled vegetables and hummus. “Yusupov lost. Kasparov, he won with the same defense in 1999. But, you know, opponents are different.”

  Sam didn’t have a clue how they could blather on about chess with Renzo’s mouth-watering dishes sitting in front of them, but they did, every night.

  “No, the opponents were the same,” said Fredrik. “Kasparov played Topolov.”

  “I said Ivanchuk,” said Krishna. “And Kasparov made the same thoughtless mistakes. He played with too much temper in his youth. For late game strategy, Karpov was a more analytical player.”

  “Gracie is no Karpov,” said Renzo. “Or Kasparov, for that matter.”

  “I know that Vienna game you’re talking about,” Grace said to Fredrik as she filled her plate. “I don’t see how it applies to Al Raji.”

  Fredrik glanced at Sam, then pursed his lips. “We shouldn’t talk strategy over dinner. Stretch doesn’t understand.”

  “His name isn’t Stretch,” said Grace.

  Fredrik twirled a fork in the air. “He’s tall, no? It’s a good joke in English.”

  Sam cleared his throat. “Can you pass the bread?”

  Fredrik grabbed the wine instead and poured himself a glass, so Grace passed him the bread.

  “Al Raji won’t use the King’s Indian,” Grace said to Fredrik, picking up the thread of their conversation. “No one uses that anymore.”

  “That’s why he might use it,” the Swede argued.

  “I think he’s more likely to come to Dubai with new strategies. They play chess differently in that part of the world,” said Krishna.

  “There’s talk that Al Raji is using Kopto and Wiesling for seconds,” said Renzo. “They are not Arabs.”

  “He’s with Arabs right now,” said Fredrik in his strident voice. “I guarantee you. He just played a match in Damascus with Ramid Aziz. They were talking about it in the chess forums.”

  “They talk a lot of crap in the chess forums,” said Grace. “I’ll ask Zeke. If Al Raji played Aziz in Damascus, he would know.”

  Grace talked to Zeke by phone two or three times a day. Sometimes she cried afterward, which Sam pretended not to notice. It’s none of your business. You’re just the bodyguard. He wasn’t supposed to get emotionally involved. He was trying really hard not to get emotionally involved, but that first day, when he’d found her under the bed shivering in terror, he’d felt emotionally involved—and not in a comfortable way.

  Sam had never had problems keeping a professional distance from clients. He maintained a cordial, work-centered focus, but lately he’d found himself focusing on other things, like Grace’s fleeting smiles, and the way she moved and tugged at her hair when she concentrated, and the way she perched on chairs. Sometimes when he watched her staring at her chess board and pushing her nerdy glasses up her nose, he thought about what happened to her in Russia, and fantasized about killing the men who’d hurt her.

  He’d been a soldier. He carried a gun, but he wasn’t a killer. So wanting to kill for Grace Ann Frasier was a new and alarming thing. But then, Grace was a new and alarming thing. She didn’t think like other people, or act like anyone he’d ever known. Novelty—the opposite of habituation. When he was more used to her, she wouldn’t seem so fascinating. He needed to concentrate on his job, which was watching out for her safety. He glanced up at Fredrik.

  Sam didn’t trust the Swede. He was a jackass and a blowhard, too loud and fake and all around irritating. Fredrik was supposed to be helping Grace, but whenever they had strategy powwows, Fredrik got her all wrought up. It was like he enjoyed playing with her, or manipulating her like some piece on a chess board.

  “You want more, boss?” asked Renzo, as Sam used bread to mop the last of the chimichurri from his plate. “You want some wine?”

  “I’ve had enough, thank you,” said Sam. “And I can’t drink on the job.”

  Fredrik scoffed. “What job? It’s just us here.”

  “I’ll have more,” said Grace, holding her plate out to Renzo. “It’s very good.”

  The Argentinian smiled at her, a true, fond smile that was everything Fredrik’s smile wasn’t.

  “I just don’t understand why he has to be here,” said Fredrik, downing his wine with a slurp. “The bodyguard.”

  Renzo piled more meat and sauce on Grace’s plate. “He’s here because Gracie is the first female World Chess Challenger, and some people don’t wish her to succeed.”

  “But those people aren’t here. They aren’t here in this house. I doubt they even know we’re in Helsinki.”

  “Not yet,” said Renzo. “But they could find out any day.”

  “Why do you care if I have a bodyguard?” asked Grace. “Are you jealous, Fredrik?”

  He frowned. “Men don’t need bodyguards. Only women.”

  “I’ve actually guarded a lot of male clients,” Sam said. “Guys way bigger and stronger than you.”

  Grace turned to Sam, her eyes sparkling with amusement. Sam didn’t really want to get into a cock fight with Fredrik, but he would, especially if it made Grace smile.

  “So I’m the only one wh
o thinks it’s weird?” Fredrik looked around the table. Renzo was busy eating, and Grace was ignoring him. Krishna was impossible to read. Sam knew from the police reports that Krishna had been the other second in Russia, the other old man who’d been oblivious to Grace’s beating in the next room.

  “He doesn’t do anything all day,” Fredrik persisted. “He just sits around looking at her. It’s like she’s paying him for nothing.”

  “I’m paying him to keep the weirdos away,” said Grace.

  “But there are no weirdos here.”

  “Aren’t there?” she said with the perfect touch of acid. Renzo smothered a laugh. “Plus, he speaks Arabic,” Grace said. “Which we’ll need in Dubai.”

  “So bring him when we go to Dubai.”

  “Why are you talking about me like I’m not here?” asked Sam. He was trying to stay out of things, to be professional, but his temper was starting to fray.

  “I just don’t understand why Grace needs a bodyguard,” Fredrik said, scowling at him. “She’s never had one before. You don’t even play chess.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I play chess, and it doesn’t matter whether you approve or not. Either way, I’m going to do my job.”

  Fredrik ruffled. “It’s throwing money away, in my opinion.”

  “Your opinion doesn’t matter,” he said bluntly. “Grace’s safety does.”

  Krishna finally interrupted in a clipped, heated voice. “It is Grace’s choice if she wants personal security,” he said to Fredrik. “She is paying this man for a service, and he is providing it. It’s none of your business. It’s not your concern.”

  Fredrik blinked at Krishna’s scolding, and an awkward silence fell over the table. Sam made no effort to fill it. He liked watching Fredrik squirm. Renzo got up to bring dessert, ramekins of custard, which Fredrik turned down in favor of more wine. Krishna started another half-hearted conversation about some chess player’s game, but no one got into it.

  Fredrik leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “So, you know where we’re all from, Stretch. Where are you from?”