Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller)

by Molly Cochran

  "It is not time," a voice called. It was a sound out of space and time. Tagore's voice.

  It is time! Justin wanted to scream. It's time for me to die. I've failed in every way. Leave me alone!

  But the voice would not be silent. Instead, it was joined by a thousand others, the wails of the dead calling to him.

  "Hail to thee, O Wearer of the Blue Hat," they chanted.

  "Hail to thee, Patanjali!"

  And through the deep earth, the scent of almonds came to him.

  His fingers moved. Almost against his will, his muscles strained. Above him, the ground heaved. He was traveling up, out of the void of death into the place of penance. He would not, he knew, be allowed to rest. The pain he felt was agonizing, the shock of movement horrible. Some of his bones were broken. When he lay beneath the ground near death, the pain had disappeared, but now each movement intensified it.

  This was his punishment, he thought. His karma had been broken; as penance, he would not be allowed to die until he had made it whole again.

  The suffocating heat was replaced by cool air. He crawled out of the hole in the ground that had accepted him so willingly, only to spit him out again. The dead did not want him among them. He was soiled. He was unfit to join them.

  Above him shone pinpricks of light. Stars, he thought. I'm free.

  Free to die again.

  How many times must he die before he could rest?

  He lay near the grave, exhausted, and slept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  He awoke in hot sun, sweating. His hands and clothes were filthy. His left wrist was swollen to twice its normal size. He wore only one shoe, and his right leg was bleeding. Beside him was a deep hole cut into a hillside. Below him was a forest. In the distance, through the trees, he could see a small village. He had no idea where he was, who he was, where he had been, or what he was doing alone on the side of a mountain. His thoughts came scattered, in pieces. They formed themselves in a dozen different languages, then fled before he could capture them.

  He staggered to his feet, fainted, pulled himself up again. The medallion around his neck glinted in the sun. What was it? he wondered. A snake? Was he a rich man to wear gold as an ornament?

  Outside the village, a farmer and his family were picking stones out of a hard, barren field, preparing for the spring sowing. The wife—a thin, wizened woman with a face carved in sharp planes—stood up, her hands on her back, as Justin limped toward them.

  She watched him for a moment, then flew at him angrily. "Get out of here! We don't want trouble. The Russians are near. Find another way to where you're going. Shoo!"

  Justin looked at her uncomprehendingly. His head was swimming. The woman was no more than a blurred form, her voice a distant sound, growing fainter. He weaved where he stood, trying to focus his vision.

  "What's wrong with him?" the farmer asked.

  "Been shot, from the looks of that leg. My guess is the Russians already had him. Look at his feet. He's only got one shoe." She walked briskly toward Justin. "Go," she said, pointing emphatically westward. "Do you understand?" She shook her head. "Stupid Czech. He doesn't know a word I'm saying."

  Justin held out a hand to the woman. She backed away. Unable to stand any longer, he shuddered, tried to walk, and fell.

  The man bent to see the wound on Justin's leg. "He's been hurt pretty badly. His eyes are in fever."

  "We can't keep him here," the woman said. "The Russians will burn everything we have."

  The man threw his cap to the ground. "The Russians, the Russians," he said hoarsely. "We are not Russians. This man is dying, and we will help him, by Christ."

  He picked Justin up in his powerful arms.

  "All right, then," the woman shouted after him angrily. "But take him to the village. Don't keep him here."

  The villagers were already celebrating the departure of the Russians. The bell of the small wooden church rang jubilantly and the dirt streets were filled, the inhabitants relieved to be able to leave their homes without fear of being stopped by soldiers.

  "Franek!" someone shouted to the farmer, waving a bottle. "Look! Now we know it's a special day. Even old Franek has come into town. What have you brought us?"

  The farmer prodded his horse along in silence to the doctor's house.

  "What's the matter, Franek? Is someone sick? Where's your wife?" A few people gathered around the cart as Franek tied his horse. Sighing, he uncovered the man lying in the back.

  "A Czech," someone gasped.

  "Are you crazy? Get him out of here."

  "He will see the doctor before he leaves," Franek said obstinately, lifting Justin out of the cart.

  "We will all burn," a woman whispered. "It is a bad omen."

  Franek pounded on the door, drowning the woman out. The doctor came out, pulling his wire eyeglasses over his ears. In his hand he still clutched a dinner napkin. "What is it? What's the commotion?"

  "He's got a Czech," someone called.

  "Oh, Franek," the doctor said dispiritedly, looking at the man in his arms. His hands went to the man's dirty face, then pulled back abruptly.

  "What's wrong?" the farmer asked.

  "This man ... I saw him yesterday. He was ..."

  "He was what?"

  "Dead," the doctor whispered. "I was sure of it."

  A murmur rose in the crowd. The villagers crossed themselves. Others came to see what was going on.

  "He was with the Russian division. The soldiers were concerned."

  "A Russian?" Franek asked incredulously.

  "Bring him in," the doctor said. "Quickly."

  The big farmer laid the unconscious man on the road. "No." He stepped back and folded his arms. "As a Christian, I couldn't let the man die on my land. But by God, I'll go no farther than this for a Russian."

  The crowd became noisy. The little doctor tried to lift Justin under the arms, but he was pushed away.

  "Stone him!" someone shouted.

  "Kill the Russian!"

  The sound of horse's hooves galloping down the narrow street sent the crowd into shrieks of fear. But it was only a small boy, Franek's son. "Father! Father!" he called.

  "Dimitri?"

  The farmer pushed through the growing mob as the boy dismounted.

  "Mother made me come," he said breathlessly. "I went to the mountain to see where the stranger came from. There was a hole there. A grave, it looked like. I found this inside." He produced a shoe.

  Women wailed. Instinctively, the doctor crossed himself. Franek took the shoe from the boy's hands and threw it into the street. The people stepped aside, as if the shoe were some evil talisman.

  "Risen from the dead," someone whispered.

  "He is the Undead One."

  The crowd backed off, leaving a circle of space around Justin.

  "Look. He wakes."

  Justin blinked. He propped himself up on one elbow, holding his hand to his forehead. Then he looked, surprised, at the mass of people gathered around him. His face was strained, uncomprehending.

  Franek's son, standing in the inner ring of the circle, picked up a small stone and hurled it at Justin. It struck him in the forehead, leaving a bright gash. The little doctor ran to stop the boy, but others had already picked up rocks and thrown them. Justin rolled onto his side, trying to shield himself from the attack.

  "Stop it!" the doctor yelled. "You're killing him, can't you see?"

  "Get out of the way!" Someone knocked the doctor to the ground, while the rocks continued to thump against the stranger's huddled body.

  Suddenly a young woman dressed in gray rags rushed into the clearing, picking up stones and hurling them into the crowd.

  "That's for you, scum-eating bastards!" she shrieked, oblivious to the shower of stones directed now at her as well as the fallen man beside her.

  "Stop, stop," a voice called from the outer ring of the crowd. The mob parted as a fat, balding man wearing a cleric's collar bustled forward.

  The
woman in the clearing flung back her arm to take aim at the pastor, then stopped. Instead, she dropped the rock in her hand and spat on the ground.

  "The witch," someone said. "Come to take her own."

  The pastor held up his hand. "What's this?" he asked sternly.

  "Ask them," the woman said contemptuously. She stooped to wrap Justin's arm around her shoulders. She was small, not much over five feet, but the sinews in her neck and forearms attested to a life of hard work. She got him into a standing position. "Let me pass," she said.

  "Who are you, child?" the pastor asked.

  "Don't go near her," someone said.

  "Better listen to him," the woman said nastily. "I might turn you into a frog."

  The pastor stepped back, shocked, as the woman shoved past him. The doctor came up to explain.

  "She means no harm, Father."

  "Is she from around here? I've never seen her before."

  "Her name is Yva Pradziad. She lives in the hills east of here. Keeps to herself, mostly. The villagers here say she's a witch, but there's nothing to that. She makes some herbal medicines, and occasionally delivers babies for the hill people. I don't think she can help him, though."

  "Leave him, my son," the priest said. "Whether he's a Russian or a Czech, it is better that he is with her than here in the village. We cannot put the lives of all our people in danger because of one stranger."

  The doctor nodded. "It's funny, though. I was sure he was the one the Russians called me to see yesterday."

  "And?"

  "And he was dead."

  The priest pulled himself up to full height. "Don't speak heresy, my son.”

  "But they found his shoe in an open grave," a woman whispered, moving in between the two men. "And he wore a snake, the symbol of the Devil, on his breast."

  "Whoever he is, he did not rise from the grave," the priest said loudly. "And anyone who says so will be punished both in heaven and here on earth. By me. Those who wish may come with me to the church, to light a candle for the soul of this man."

  The villagers followed meekly, whispering among themselves. Only Franek and his son left. The doctor stayed behind, feeling ashamed. He should never have spoken. The villagers were good people, but the strain of superstition in them was strong. They would never, he knew, believe that the poor, wounded stranger was anything but a living spirit of evil, just as they would never forgive Yva Pradziad the sin of living without a husband and family. Such a woman would, in their eyes, always be a witch, and the doctor was too much of a gentleman to explain to them how he knew she wasn't.

  The first and only time Yva had come to see him was nearly three years before, when she was only sixteen. She was a scrawny thing, as bedraggled as a stray cat, carrying in her arms a baby already blue and stiff.

  She had been expelled by her family when they discovered she was pregnant. Alone, she built a shack for herself in the rocky hills where the soil was too poor to farm anything but roots. The work must have been too hard; she'd had no milk, and the baby took sick within two days after its birth. It was already dead by the time she reached the doctor.

  Her reaction to the infant's death was stoic, but when he suggested that she see the pastor about burial, she turned on him violently.

  "They'll never let me bury my child here." She spat. "They'll say he was conceived in sin. My parents told me."

  The doctor could not think of anything to say. He offered her a tonic for herself, but she refused. She snatched up the tiny body of her dead son and left. She never came to him again. Occasionally, he saw her in the village, trading turnips for lye to make soap, but she never spoke to him or anyone else. Yva had her own world, spare, hard, and independent. She earned some food by nursing the isolated mountain people who distrusted doctors, with her medicines and poultices, but for the most part she lived on the animals she killed in the traps around her house and the food she could find in the forest. She had managed to live a solitary life in a hostile climate, among neighbors who despised her, and for that, he admired her.

  Perhaps the stranger would live. It would give her some company, at least for a while. He hoped, for her sake, that her medicines were adequate.

  "Hey, Doc," someone whispered nearby, startling the doctor.

  The surprise quickly turned to disappointment. The man beside him was Józek Szulc. Józek was one of those men whom the doctor had come to realize were a necessary evil in any country occupied by a foreign power. Owning no land, Józek nevertheless always had a supply of ready cash from the sale of black market goods, Russian products, army supplies, and food. In a land perennially short of even the meanest food supplies, Józek would regularly come into town with whole calves for sale at exorbitant prices. He was gone frequently and never disclosed the destination of his travels, but he usually came back with treasures considered priceless by the austere goral people: nails, salt, tea, insecticide, cotton cloth, dyes, paraffin for canning, boots, tires, and, most valued of all, meat.

  If others believed, as the doctor did, that Józek was a thief and a conniver, they took pains not to let Józek see their disdain. The doctor himself had relied on Józek more than once for urgently needed supplies of penicillin and antiseptic.

  "Yes, Józek?" the doctor said blandly.

  "You saw him up close, didn't you? The Undead One?"

  The doctor sighed. "He's just an ordinary man."

  "That's not what I heard. Did you get a look at the medallion around his neck?"

  "It was a necklace of some kind."

  "Of pure gold, I hear. Forged in the furnaces of hell."

  "Oh, come now, Józek ..."

  The wiry little man laughed. "I don't believe those fairy tales, either," he said. "These fools say anything. That's why I'm checking with you. Was it gold?"

  The doctor blinked exasperatedly. "I really don't know. It could have been."

  Józek sucked on his tooth, his eyes squinting into the sun. "Think he's going to live?"

  "I can't tell you that, either," the doctor said sharply.

  Józek shrugged. "Just asking. The medallion won't be any use to him if he dies."

  The doctor excused himself and went inside, slamming the door behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Yva Pradziad's house was surrounded by animal traps. Before she began to set them, the local children amused themselves by breaking the oilskin windows and throwing piles of horse dung inside. After a rash of scraped ankles and broken toes, they left her alone. She hadn't been bothered in more than a year.

  The house was no more than a crude shack, with a small garden carved out of the rocky, uneven ground behind the traps. Inside, the only furnishings were a large wooden table, a broken chair, splinted and tied, set in front of the stone fireplace, in which hung a kettle and an old iron frying pan, and the straw bed where Justin lay.

  He had walked, mute and uncomplaining, from the village with her, but as soon as he entered the house he had fallen unconscious. Working only with some boiled rags and a sharp green stick, Yva probed the wound in his leg. The bullet had passed through, but she reopened the wound and cauterized it with a hot poker. She bound the leg, put a splint on his broken wrist, cleaned the caked mud off the stranger, pressed his face with cold cloths, and, for good measure, wrapped a poultice around his chest. That was the extent of her knowledge.

  The stranger slept all night without waking. By morning, his fever still hadn't broken. There were medicines, Yva knew, that could help him. She had nursed fevers before, and wounds, but nothing as serious as this.

  By night, the fever was worse. The stranger lay soaked in his own sweat, the straw beneath him hot. She smoothed his forehead; strands of his black hair stuck to her fingers.

  She sat back on the broken chair and looked at him. Even in fever, with perspiration pouring from him, he was beautiful. His face was smooth and chiseled as if by an angelic sculptor, and his bare body was lean and hard. It had never occurred to her before that men could be
beautiful; she had thought beauty was the special possession of women, like the women she saw sometimes on a Sunday morning on their way to church, their faces glistening, their hair shining. But this man was beautiful, too, and his beauty was all the more powerful to her for reason of having been so unexpected.

  She took a cupful of broth from the large black kettle hanging at the fireplace and, when it had cooled somewhat, pressed it to Gilead's mouth. She opened his lips with her fingers and allowed some of the broth to dribble in, but it only rolled out the side of his mouth. He would die, she knew, without food and without medicine. And he was just too beautiful to let die.

  Yva reached into an old jug in the corner of the room. Inside was a scrap of cloth tied around some money. There were only a few zlotys; not enough for a doctor, and a doctor was what the man desperately needed. Even if the doctor in the village did not fear Yva as a witch, he was still one of them. And she would not ask one of them for a favor. She would have to pay.

  "Yva! Yva Pradziad!" a voice called from the bottom of the hill below her house.

  Recognizing it, she picked up a rock as she stepped out the door and hurled it at Józek. "Can't you leave me alone, scum?" she screamed.

  "Hold it, Yva! I only want to talk. But I don't want to get caught in your traps."

  "Then talk from down there, Russian ass-kisser."

  Józek spread his arms wide. "Now, is that any way to talk?"

  "I'm only saying the truth. Everyone knows you make money from the Russians, only they're all too gutless to say so. They're afraid you won't sell them your precious Russian luxuries. Well, there's nothing I need from you." She spat elaborately.

  "I'm not here to sell. I'm here to buy," Józek said pleasantly.

  Yva cocked her head. "Buy? Buy what?"

  "Your friend inside." He thrust his chin toward the house. "Is he dead yet?"

  Her face pinched into a grimace. She picked up another rock and threw it expertly, striking Józek on the shoulder. "Get out of here!"