White Death

by Daniel Blake

  He let me play as much chess as I wanted. The computer science part helped a lot in that, with search engines and stuff. Turns out I was wrong about getting into college not making me better at chess. Everything I did was to make me better at the game.

  You heard of synaesthesia? It’s when your senses get muddled up; you hear colors, you see smells, that kind of thing. Saturday to me is purple and smells of coffee. Red is Beethoven’s Fifth. The taste of eggplant is those little indentations you get on a thimble.

  And it’s like that on a chessboard for me too. I don’t see the pieces. I see the paths they make, I hear the squares they can go to. A bishop is a blinking light, a rook is a straight tunnel. Patterns swirl and collide. Every move makes something new, and I’m in control of it all, this board which is the whole world, quivering with tension.

  Other people – and I didn’t know this for the longest time, because you think everyone sees the world like you do until you know better – other people have to calculate. This piece goes there, so that piece goes there, and if the rook takes the knight then the pawn can take the rook and no, start again, what if the queen goes to that square … I don’t have to do that. I just see it. I don’t know how, I just do. It’s like everyone else is hacking through the jungle with trees all around them, and I’m hovering above and can see which way’s out and where all the dead ends are.

  So you get better than everyone else, and suddenly you’re a freak show. Everyone wants part of you; no one wants you for yourself, they only want you because they think you can make them money, or that being with you will somehow bring them glory or status or some bullshit like that. You know that movie The Truman Show? My favorite movie of all time, because the Jim Carrey figure, Truman – the true man – he’s me. He’s the only honest Joe in a world full of scheming, dissembling shysters.

  I tell you this, Franco, and I don’t say it to make you feel sorry for me, or for any reason apart from that it’s the truth: I have never had a friend in my life. Not a true friend. Not a single person who’s ever accepted me for what I am and wanted nothing from me. Not one friend, ever.

  40

  Inessa had won the race back to the hotel, so they were quits. The government would pick up the tab for dinner, Patrese said, as if it hadn’t been going to all along. Inessa went back to her sister’s place to change, and then met Patrese in the hotel restaurant.

  They made a pact not to talk about the case, and instead spoke easily about themselves; the kind of mutual dance you get on a not-quite-date, when each side is trying to portray themselves in the best possible light while simultaneously trying to discern the other’s intentions. Yes, the chess parallel did occur to Patrese, and he stamped down on it. Too much thinking about Kwasi would make Patrese as insane as Kwasi was.

  She was doing a PhD in comparative literature, she said. More precisely, and to give her doctorate its full and specific title: Russian Formalism, the interaction of math and physics theories with twentieth-century literature from a thematic and stylistic perspective: kitsch and camp aesthetics in post-Soviet Russia: the insect metaphor in literature and media studies. She liked maps, austere buildings and primary colors.

  Before Harvard, she’d gone to Penn State, so she was inordinately impressed when Patrese told her he’d played in the Pitt–Penn State football match. College football was huge at both universities, and the guys who made the teams were revered across campus. Patrese told her what it felt like to run out at Beaver Stadium, Penn State’s home turf: the largest stadium in North America, and boy, did you feel it. Banks of people rising high and vertiginous in a tidal wave of blue and white, banging out their chant like an earthquake, shock waves round and round the stadium, the physical force of the sound battering against your chest.

  Inessa took up the famous Penn State chant, clapping her hands.

  ‘We Are!’

  ‘Penn State!’

  ‘We Are!’

  ‘Penn State!’

  The other diners glared at them. Inessa and Patrese collapsed with laughter.

  They’d got to coffee, Patrese debating not so much whether to make a move as when, when his BlackBerry bleeped. He clicked on the message folder, and caught his breath.

  One message. Sender: Kwasi King.

  ‘Problem?’ Inessa said.

  ‘Let you know in a moment.’

  He read the e-mail twice: once fast, to get the gist, and then again more slowly. Americans don’t have much time for smart kids … It was us against the world … I have never had a friend in my life.

  He handed Inessa the BlackBerry. Probably against the rules, showing an outsider evidence like this, but since they’d brought her in specifically to try to uncover Kwasi’s mentality, it seemed dumb not to show her communication from the man himself.

  She read it in silence.

  ‘Sounds like him, sure enough,’ she said.

  ‘Why’s he sending it?’

  ‘To mess with your head.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s trying to explain himself?’

  ‘Maybe, a little. But messing with your head’s definitely higher on his list.’

  It was a game to Kwasi, Patrese saw. Everything was a game.

  ‘Show me,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘Show me chess. Play with me. Show me the attraction, show me why he’s obsessed with it.’

  ‘You ever played before?’

  ‘Sure. A little bit, now and then. I know the rules. I’m not a complete patzer, but any decent player would kick my ass from here to Stamford.’

  ‘I’ve got a set in my bag. Little pocket set.’

  ‘Never travel anywhere without it, huh?’

  ‘No serious player does. Let’s finish up here and go play in your room.’

  They could, Patrese thought, have played in the restaurant, the bar, the lobby: somewhere public. They didn’t have to play in his room. He felt familiar stirrings. It had been around a couple of weeks since he’d been with a woman – not since before this case started, he realized with a jolt – and running to the lighthouse and back wasn’t an entirely comprehensive stress reliever.

  ‘Sure. I’ll just settle up here and pop over to the office.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Get someone from IT to check my BlackBerry, see if we can find where the e-mail address originated.’

  ‘OK.’

  The Bureau’s New Haven office had an IT specialist permanently on site. Patrese drove the few minutes to the office, left Inessa in the car, went inside and handed over his BlackBerry, saying he wanted it back as soon as possible. The skeleton task force staff manning the phones reported nothing of note from the surveillance of Unzicker.

  Back at the hotel, they went up to his room.

  ‘Here’s what I suggest,’ Inessa said. ‘If we play normally, I’ll crush you. No offense, but I will.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So I’m going to give you odds, a handicap. I’m going to play without my queen.’

  ‘You’ll still beat me.’

  ‘Probably. But that’s not the point. You want to see why Kwasi’s so obsessed. I’m going to ask you every few moves what you’re doing, what your plan is. If you make a dumbass move, I’ll let you take it back.’

  ‘Is there a forfeit for the loser?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  She set the pieces up with quick, practiced hands. When both wooden armies were ready, she went down the lines, adjusting each piece and pawn so it sat dead center on its square. Then she took a pawn in each hand – one white, one black – put her hands behind her back, made a show of shifting the pawns from one hand to the other, and finally held out two clenched fists.

  Patrese tapped the knuckles of her right hand. She opened it. White.

  ‘White and queen odds.’ She laughed. ‘You don’t put up a good show from here, I really will be disappointed.’

  She took the black queen off the board, and they started to play. />
  Patrese took several minutes over each of his moves, even the easy ones, trying to think like Inessa was, trying to second-guess where she was going. He brought his bishop out too far, and wasted a move retreating it to safety. Now the knight, but when he told her what he was trying to do with it, use it to control the center, she pointed out that it would be better on a different square.

  Sure, this was her turf, but he felt foolish, awkward, a klutz. She was glowing. He was way too conscious of her to concentrate properly: and he knew she knew this.

  ‘Chess isn’t just a game,’ she said. ‘It’s a line of communication between two brains. You and I send and receive messages, and we transmit them through the board and pieces. You must understand my message, or you’ll fall into trouble.’ She cocked her head. ‘Are you good at working out intentions?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You know, sometimes, when you and your opponent are both thinking furiously, and your heads are only a couple of feet apart, hunched over the board, you wonder whether all that energy and all that proximity will make thoughts jump from one to the other.’

  She pushed her chair back and rested her chin on the table, looking up at him through the forest of pieces. He had the uncomfortable feeling she was trying to read his mind. But he was beginning to see the beauty of the game: not of the rather poor brand he was playing, of course, but of the game itself. It was at once a dance and a fight, an almost impossible balancing act where every reinforcement left a weakness somewhere else, every advance a hole behind it, every retreat a gap in front.

  He took one of her pawns, and she moved so fast to take back that her hand brushed over the top of his. Next move, she rested her fingers on top of one of her bishops and stroked its head, looking first at the board and then at Patrese. He smiled clumsily. Her eyes widened a little. She pulled her chair in close again and leaned across the board, almost over to his side, trying to get a better view of the position. Their foreheads brushed against each other. He thought about kissing her there and then.

  Her pieces were everywhere. Patrese hadn’t made any outright blunders, at least none that he was aware of, but move by move he was being pushed back, his pieces crowding in on one another while Inessa’s roamed free, aiming their fire at almost every square in his camp while protecting each other with jaunty insouciance. For a brief, absurd moment Patrese felt as though his pieces were somehow animate objects, defenders of a medieval citadel bumping up against each other in panic and confusion while the unstoppable enemy came galloping across the plains.

  ‘When I was a little girl learning to play,’ she said, ‘I used to think of chess as a fairy tale, full of castles and knights, kings and queens. Here’s a knight coming to rescue the maiden from captivity. Here’s a loyal foot soldier laying down his life for his queen.’

  She licked her lips. Her eyes never left his as she picked up a knight, lifted it over a helpless rook, and put it back down.

  ‘That’s mate,’ she said.

  He thought of Steve McQueen as Thomas Crown. ‘Shall we play something else?’

  She got up and came over to his side of the board. He was rising to meet her when she kissed him, very softly, on the lips.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘Maybe some other time.’

  After she’d gone, Patrese stared at the door for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing. He was losing his touch, clearly. He hoped it wasn’t an omen for the case.

  There was a knock at the door. Patrese smiled. What would be her excuse? She’d forgotten her chess set? Perhaps her cellphone? He knew women like her: they liked to be in control, make their point, and only then would they let anything happen.

  He walked over to the door.

  ‘I knew you’d be back,’ he said as he opened it.

  It wasn’t Inessa. It was the IT guy from the Bureau – Larry, Patrese thought his name was – and it was hard to tell who was more embarrassed, him or Patrese.

  ‘Er … sorry,’ Patrese said. ‘Thought you were someone else.’

  Larry handed Patrese his BlackBerry as though it were toxic. ‘Can’t trace the ISP. He’s used a remailer. Several, actually.’

  Patrese nodded. He’d come across remailers on previous cases. Every e-mail sent has a heap of information attached: details of the Internet service provider, serial number of the computer that sent it, interface hardware address, and so on. These details can be kept secret by sending the message not directly to the recipient but to a third party, who strips away all those identifying details, replaces them with their own, and only then sends it on.

  But since this has an obvious weakness – the recipient knows the remailer’s details, and the remailer knows the sender’s details – people who really want their location to remain secret use multiple remailers. The e-mail is sent to the first server, which reorders it and transmits it on to another server, which does the same thing, and so on. Only the first server knows the sender’s details, and only the last server knows the recipient’s.

  Theoretically, each server can be traced back from the one it forwarded to, but they encrypt their details. Even if the details can be decrypted, the servers will almost certainly be based in different countries. Different countries means different jurisdictions and different laws, which means a law enforcement nightmare.

  No, Patrese thought: they weren’t going to find Kwasi this way.

  He thanked Larry, took the BlackBerry, shut the door, and reminded himself to be less of a dork tomorrow than he had been today.

  41

  Tuesday, November 16th

  killerinstinct32: Hi.

  repino: Hey.

  killerinstinct32: Wazzup?

  repino: Peeps lookin 4 u everywhere.

  killerinstinct32: Peeps? What kind of peeps?

  repino: Peeps with badges and guns, u know?

  killerinstinct32: I know. They been 2 c u?

  repino has been idle for 3 minutes.

  killerinstinct32: U there? They been 2 c u?

  repino: Sorry, had to take leak.

  killerinstinct32: Jeez, u scared the shit outta me. They been 2 c u?

  repino: Sure.

  killerinstinct32: They aks u to let em know if I got in touch?

  repino: Sure.

  killerinstinct32: U going to?

  repino: Don’t be dumb.

  killerinstinct32: U check for surveillance?

  repino: Every day. Nothing. U need help?

  killerinstinct32: No, I’m good. Wanna play?

  repino: Not right now. Wot your next move?

  killerinstinct32: Can’t tell u. Best u don’t know.

  repino: I’m worried, man. Cops comin round, that’s some heavy shit.

  killerinstinct32: U be cool. Just say u know nothin.

  repino: Maybe they checkin my records. U know I got into bit of trouble?

  killerinstinct32: Quit freakin out. Let em check. Tell em u got nothin 2 do with this.

  repino: Wot if they don’t believe me?

  killerinstinct32: U know some good lawyers.

  repino: I don’t.

  killerinstinct32: U know someone who does. I’m relyin on u. Don’t let me down.

  repino: I’ll try.

  killerinstinct32: U gotta do more than that. Else I vamoose forever.

  repino: OK.

  killerinstinct32: Sure?

  repino: Yeah.

  killerinstinct32: OK. Gotta scoot. Hasta luego.

  killerinstinct32 has logged out.

  repino has logged out.

  New Haven, CT

  The Beinecke Library opens at nine o’clock every morning, and Tartu was always to be found waiting outside a few minutes before. Rehearsals with the orchestra began at midday, he’d explained to Anna, so he wanted to get in as much time here as possible before he had to go off to the symphony hall.

  Tartu was turning out to be something of a minor celebrity in the Beinecke. Many people recognized him, and though few were crass enough to ask f
or an autograph – not that they’d have gotten much joy, since pens were strictly forbidden in the Reading Room – some smiled at him, or murmured how sorry they were that he’d been caught up in such a dreadful thing. Tartu would smile with unfailing courtesy at each of them, even if they’d disturbed him in the midst of ferocious concentration on a rare manuscript.

  He thanked Anna every time she brought up from the archives something new – which was to say, something very old, though new to him. She saw his excitement at a first edition of Heart of Darkness, an original Boswell journal, the manuscripts of Exiles and Far from the Madding Crowd, the Lhasa edition of the sacred Tibetan Kanjur. Tartu held them as though they were precious children, tracing a gloved finger across the pages in reverential silence. More than once, Anna thought she saw his eyes moisten. She’d found over the years that, while many people say they love books, few really do; not in the same way that people love art or music, let alone their families. But Tartu clearly did.

  He asked her if she was free this Saturday, and if so, whether she’d like to come to the concert as his guest. He couldn’t sit with her, obviously, but he’d make sure she had the best seat in the house, and maybe afterwards he could take her out to dinner, to thank her for all the kindness she’d shown him.

  She’d like that, she replied. She’d like that very much.

  42

  Wednesday, November 17th

  Boston, MA

  Late afternoon, barely even dark, and Ulysses Bar on Beacon Street had the gentle buzz of happiness that comes from the end of the day’s work and the start of the evening’s drinking. Ulysses was as Irish as its name suggested, and more authentically so than most of the city’s ‘Irish’ pubs. It was slightly off the Freedom Trail, so it attracted fewer tourists and more proper Bostonians. In particular, it was a favorite watering-hole for those who worked in the vast Suffolk County Courthouse just round the corner in Pemberton Square; and more often than not, that included cops who’d been required to testify in court that day.