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Pawn (Ironclad Bodyguards 1)

Page 13

by Molly Joseph


  “I’m here to play chess,” she said, tugging at the bracelet. “I forgot that for a while, but now I remember. I don’t want a relationship anymore.” Her expression darkened. “No offense, but I would just keep thinking of you as that guy who ruined everything.”

  Sam swallowed a growl. “You can’t say ‘no offense’ and keep saying offensive things. It doesn’t work that way. You said you loved me last night, that you needed me. Were you lying?”

  “A lot has happened since last night. My feelings have changed.”

  He could see that she was losing it again. Losing her temper, losing her mind, losing her grace. As for him, he’d been demoted from You make me happy to the guy who’d ruined everything.

  Very well. He stood up and went to the armoire, and got out his luggage.

  “I’ll move to the second floor, if that’s what you want,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I think it would be best.”

  “That’s fine. If you’re done with me, you’re done.” He turned to her with injured pride, and an injured heart. “I’ll be that thing that amused you between Antarctic explorers and whatever captures your fancy next. It’s really okay, Grace. It’s absolutely okay.”

  *** *** ***

  Fredrik’s departure left the house in a gloom. Grace, Renzo, and Krishna put three chess boards on the kitchen table and huddled over them for hours a day, occasionally referring to books or hopping on their computers. Renzo stopped cooking. They ate sandwiches while hunched over chess diagrams.

  Sam sat on the periphery and kept his mouth shut.

  Everyone was cordial. There was no more hurling of laptops, no more screaming. Sam did everything around the house so they could concentrate on developing new strategies. Grace received a few more death threats, but they didn’t upset her. She was too busy. She received an escalating number of interview and media requests too, and endorsement offers, but her answer was always the same. “Not now.”

  There was no word from Fredrik, although he was assumed to be working against them. But as Krishna pointed out, “they will know that we know that they know.” If their prior strategy sessions had been rendered useless, they’d also been rendered useless to Al Raji, because he knew they wouldn’t use any of those strategies now.

  But the Saudi faction developed a new strategy which they launched on the fourth day after Fredrik’s defection. Headscarf-gate was quickly picked up by the media. It came to Grace via a press release.

  “SAUDI CHESS CHAMPION REQUESTS FEMALE OPPONENT DON HEADSCARF IN UPCOMING MATCH”

  “He’s requesting,” said Grace. “That doesn’t mean I have to do it, right?”

  When the news outlets asked for a statement, Grace said she wasn’t planning to wear a headscarf. The Saudi press spun this into accusations of anti-Islam bigotry and cultural insensitivity.

  “CHESS CHALLENGER REFUSES TO WEAR HIJAB”

  “I didn’t refuse,” she said when she saw the headlines. “I just said I wasn’t going to wear one!”

  The Western broadcasts debated her decision and blew it up into an incident of epic proportions. The Arab broadcasts condemned her as a Western whore. The fundamentalist websites called her worse things. Sam started to worry. People knew exactly where she was now. When they traveled to Dubai, she’d be in the belly of the beast.

  He told her she ought to consider wearing a headscarf for her own safety. It was the wrong thing to say to a stressed out, overworked, oversensitive chess player.

  “Why should I have to wear a headscarf when I’m not Muslim?” she yelled at him, like all of this was his fault. “I won’t be able to concentrate with that thing on my head.”

  “He’s not asking you to wear a burka,” he said. “It’s just a hijab, to cover your hair.”

  “I’m an American. This is stupid. Why can’t I play chess with my hair showing? Al Raji’s trying to fuck with me. He’s trying to exert power over me and make me play by his rules, and I’m not having it.”

  She was so high strung these days, so different from the Grace he’d held and kissed, and made love to. He wondered if she remembered those times at all. She never even looked at him now unless she was arguing with him.

  “There’s nothing in the FIDE guidelines that says I have to play in a headscarf,” she said, which was true.

  “There are dress codes for women in Dubai,” Renzo pointed out from across the living room.

  “Shoulders and knees covered. I know, they told me, but they didn’t say anything about headscarfs.”

  “The Saudis will find your uncovered hair offensive,” Sam said. He didn’t want to annoy her, but he was legitimately worried for her safety. “Why not wear something understated, like the scarf Krishna gave you? Drape it over your hair as a gesture of good will. Problem solved.”

  “The only thing that’s going to solve this problem is me turning into a man. Which is so shitty,” she yelled, storming up the stairs.

  “She’s right,” said Krishna. “It’s shitty.”

  “You wear a turban,” Renzo said. “You even sleep in it. Tell Grace it’s not such a big deal to wear the scarf.”

  “Why don’t you tell her?” asked Krishna. “Why do you make Sam tell her?”

  “I tried to tell her. You tell her. She listens to you.”

  Sam left the two bickering men and went upstairs, because Grace was still his client, and he was supposed to be her ally. He knocked on the door to the third floor room, which was no longer his room. When she didn’t answer, he pushed it open. There was a light on in the bathroom. “Grace?”

  “Go away.”

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “Later.”

  Something about the way she said later made him cross the room and barge into the half-opened door.

  “Holy shit.” He grabbed her hand. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Half her hair was on the floor, cut off in an angry hack job. He took the scissors before she could chop off any more.

  “What?” she snapped. “You said it was offensive. God forbid I offend someone with my stupid, freaking hair. I mean, God, it’s disgusting.”

  “You’re being crazy.”

  “Oh, I’m crazy? I’m not the one who can’t deal with a woman’s uncovered head.”

  “Look at yourself. Look what you’ve done to yourself.”

  Half her hair was still long and wavy. The other half was sheared to just below her ear. “Give me the scissors,” she insisted, trying to reach them. “I’m cutting it all off.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re not turning yourself into a man for them. No.”

  “How is it any different from wearing a headscarf? It’s still changing myself for them. Because being a woman isn’t good enough. Being a woman is offensive.”

  “I shouldn’t have used that word. It has more to do with modesty.”

  “I don’t care what it has to do with. I don’t want to wear one!”

  “Cut it out, Grace! You’re losing it.” It was the first time he’d raised his voice at her, the first time he’d really yelled at her since he started working as her bodyguard. She stopped lunging for the scissors and looked at him, like she’d only just noticed he was there.

  “You’re scaring me,” he said in a more modulated tone. “Remember when I scared you, that night I fought with Fredrik? Now you’re scaring me.” He wasn’t giving back the scissors. He was going to hide them somewhere. “I don’t know how to help you, Grace. This is going-off-the-deep-end shit. I’m supposed to keep you safe.”

  He reached to touch the edges of her ravaged hair. He didn’t know how to fix this. She turned to look in the mirror, and her face reflected the same dismay he felt.

  “I need the scissors,” she said, calmer now. “I need to even it out at least.”

  “There’s a salon by the coffee shop. I think we’d better leave this to a professional.”

  She crouched down and started picking up the tufts of hair she’d hacked off. A foot of beautiful,
long blonde hair, thrown into the trash. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said mournfully.

  “They’ll be able to make it look okay.”

  “No, not about my hair. About this match. I’m the wrong person for this, this mission or whatever. This grand gesture for women and equality. I’m not strong enough. I don’t have my shit together.”

  “Grace—”

  “Even if I win, even if I change things for women, I’m not the person who should be in the history books.” She stood and stared at her reflection again. “Look at me, Sam. Maybe it’s better if I just don’t win.”

  It killed him to see her like this, dejected and falling apart. It killed him that he couldn’t take her in his arms and make everything okay.

  “You need to have courage.” He met her gaze in the mirror. “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.”

  She frowned and pushed past him out of the bathroom. He followed her, glancing wistfully at his old armoire, his old couch. He missed living here and being close to her. He missed the old Grace, who wanted and needed him. When he left to go downstairs, she was back at her chess board, staring down at the pieces with an expression of grief.

  *** *** ***

  Grace hunched over the phone, curled up in her bed. Courage. She needed courage but all she felt was fear.

  “You need to take the long view,” said Zeke. “What Fredrik has...that was the last four weeks. If you can look beyond that, you can see farther than your opponent.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go beyond, Grace. Take the strategies you lined up and see them in new ways. That was always your gift, to see the chess board differently. To make unorthodox choices.”

  “Like Anderssen’s madness?”

  “Yes. You know Al Raji is a computer, an analytic machine. You’re not going to beat him at that game, but you have another game, Gracie. Use it.”

  She tugged at her hair. It was so short now, a wispy bob that barely covered her ears. Sam had gone with her to the salon and watched as the woman fixed it. He shadowed her all the time now, afraid she would do some other abrupt, erratic thing. And maybe she would. His brooding regard unsettled her. If Sam was scared, where did that leave her?

  “I want to get it over with,” she said. “I just want to play Al Raji and get it done.”

  “Don’t go into it with that attitude,” Zeke lectured. “Don’t be Judit Polgar, and crack under the pressure, and choke. She could have been the first woman champion, you know. She was capable, but she lost her courage.”

  That word again. Courage.

  “I’m losing my courage,” she said, burrowing deeper under her covers. She wished Zeke was here with her in person. She couldn’t say that, it would only make him feel bad, but she needed his strength and focus. She needed his belief in her, because she didn’t believe in herself.

  “It’s this thing with Fredrik,” Zeke blustered. “You were right. We shouldn’t have chosen him as part of your team.”

  “The whole mess with Fredrik was Sam’s fault. They didn’t get along. Fredrik left because he got into a fight with Sam.”

  “Because Fredrik was mistreating you. I heard the story, dear. Fredrik was at fault, and I was the one who pressed you to work with him.” She heard a long, raspy sigh over the line. “Do you know what I believe, Gracie?”

  She tugged at her hair again. “What? What do you believe?”

  “I believe that everything happens for a reason. People come in and out of your life for a reason.”

  He was talking about Fredrik and his exit, but Grace thought about Sam, who seemed in her life and out of her life at the same time. Because of you. Because you’re losing it. Because you pushed him away and you’re too cowardly to beg for him to come back.

  “Maybe the thing with Fredrik will end up being a blessing,” said Zeke. “It screwed up our plans, but it forced us to make new plans, to keep thinking and working. When you get to the match in a few days, you’ll be at your peak. You’ve got to try to peak in Dubai.”

  “I don’t know what that means. How do I peak? How do I control that?”

  “By believing in yourself and being prepared. And trusting yourself. You have to trust yourself, Gracie.” He said these words with rough emphasis, drawing out each word. “Trust yourself to make the best choices, and to see what you need to see. You have the capability to do this. Don’t let doubt get in your way.”

  She pressed the sheets against her eyes, because she doubted. She was incapable. She was confused and unable to make choices. She was crying under the covers the way she had when she was a child. The way she had after Russia.

  “I’m so scared,” she said.

  “You can be scared,” said Zeke. “But you cannot doubt. You have no reason to doubt, for God’s sake. Don’t make me fly over there and knock some sense into you, child.”

  Laughter escaped through the tears. She probably needed some sense knocked into her.

  “My hair’s short now, Zeke,” she said, tugging at it again. She tugged at it all the time now, like she could pull it out of her head and make it grow faster. Erase her stupid, impulsive mistake.

  “I heard you got a haircut. Sam said you look like a French waif.”

  Sam mustn’t have told Zeke she hacked it off herself, or he wouldn’t sound so cheerful.

  “I don’t even know what that means, a French waif,” said Grace.

  “You should send me a picture.”

  “I could send you one now, if you could get texts on your phone.”

  “Agh. You know I can’t read that phone, or press the keys. I’m an old man.” He punctuated this exclamation with a fit of coughing that made her cringe.

  “Are you staying warm?” she asked. “Eating well? Wearing a good coat when you go out?”

  “Yes, mama. You don’t need to worry about me. You need to worry about Dubai, but you don’t doubt, do you understand? This is your moment, Grace Ann Frasier, and there’s no reason you can’t win. You have it inside you, the capability to do it. You have my love and my support, and the support of all your friends and fans. Don’t doubt, dochinka. I know you’ll make us proud.”

  “I hate when you say stuff like that,” said Grace. “You always make me cry.”

  “Don’t cry!” She could picture him shaking his gnarled finger at her. “Just win. And stay safe,” he added. “Listen to Sam and keep him close. Out of everyone, he’s the one you should trust most, because he doesn’t care about the chess. He only cares about you.”

  “Yeah,” she said, fighting back tears. “Okay. Everything’s going to be okay, Zeke. I know everything will be fine.”

  She said that because she didn’t want him to worry, but he was probably going to worry anyway. Two more days and the State Department people would come, and she’d be on the plane to Dubai, and then... She didn’t know.

  She almost didn’t care anymore.

  She missed Sam.

  Chapter Ten: I Need You

  “I am not playing a woman. I’m playing an opponent. This match will not be a battle of the sexes but a battle of the minds, and the greater mind will win. If Miss Frasier beats me in twelve rounds of play, I will gladly cede the title to her. But friends...I do not think this will happen.” —Saad Al Raji at a Saudi Arabian press conference

  The house was packed up. The kitchen was empty, and all but one of the chess boards put away. The four of them were leaving for Dubai in the morning. No more dark days, no more snow and negative degree temperatures. No more third-floor window looking out at the harbor.

  Renzo and Krishna had gone to bed. Sam and Grace sat at the kitchen table by the last chess board, nursing lukewarm cups of coffee.

  “Saa’adnii,” said Sam.

  “Saa’adnii,” Grace repeated.

  “Saa’adnii means ‘help me.’ ‘Shurta’ is police. Say it.”

  “Shurta. Saa’adnii.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Am I saying it wrong? With a weird accent?”

  “You’re saying it well enough for an emergency. Type it into your phone, so you won’t forget.”

  “What if I lose my phone?”

  “That’s why we’re practicing.”

  He didn’t expect to lose track of her. He didn’t expect to let her out of his sight the entire time they were in Dubai, but he wasn’t taking any chances. A good bodyguard didn’t take chances. He understood that now more than ever, sitting across from this woman he shouldn’t have loved. That he still loved.

  “Wayna al-sifaara al-amriikiiya?” he said in a rough voice.

  “What?”

  He repeated it again, slower, and made her repeat it too. “It means, ‘Where is the American Embassy?’ You don’t go anywhere without your passport, not even down the hall at the hotel. Not that you’ll be going anywhere without me.”

  “Then why do I need to learn all this stuff?” she said, typing into her phone. “Wan-na al-sa-fa-ri al-a-me-rika.”

  “Wayna. Not wanna. And it’s amriikiiya, not amerika.”

  She frowned and corrected her notes.

  “Ready? Ma fhamet. I don’t understand.”

  “Ma fhamet.”

  “Everyone will assume by looking at you that you don’t speak Arabic, but you might have trouble understanding their English.”

  “Then I say Ma fhamet?”

  “Yes. And direct them to me.”

  “Did you learn Arabic in the Army?”

  He looked up at her. Why this question? Why now? “No,” he admitted. “I learned it at home. My mother’s Syrian.”

  “Oh. Because you told me you learned it in the Army.”

  “I used it in the Army, to do my job. What does it matter?”

  “Because you lied to me.”

  She had him there. He’d lied to her the same way he lied every time he told someone his name was Sam instead of Salim.

  “I’d just met you when I told you that,” he said tightly. “I didn’t want to get into my entire family background. You’ve never told me anything about your family either.”

 

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