Grandmaster

by Molly Cochran

  After the announcements, Justin spent some time with the other American team members, then walked up the stairs to his second-floor room. His first game was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. the next day.

  Zharkov answered the soft knock on his door. One of the Russians from the ballroom stood there. He was a gorilla-shouldered man with no discernible waistline. In his light tan suit, he had the configuration of a cardboard box. He stepped inside the room.

  "He has gone up to his room, Comrade Colonel."

  "Whom did he talk to?"

  "To Kutsenko earlier. To Dr. Kutsenko later tonight."

  "Did you overhear what was said?"

  "No. I could not get close enough. But he said something that seemed to surprise her. I could tell by her face."

  "Very good. Tell your men to be very careful with the Kutsenkos. Keep a sharp eye on them."

  "Yes sir, Colonel."

  "Gilead’s second. This Harry Andrew. Was there any sign of him?"

  "No, sir," the KGB man said. "Should we do anything special with Gilead?"

  "No. I will take care of him."

  When the man left, Zharkov returned to the small desk in the room where he had been jotting notes. It had not been necessary for him to be in the ballroom to hear the pairings, because he already knew them. He had arranged to play Gilead on Friday, the match's third day. That was the night Castro would come to welcome the players officially, and Zharkov knew that the Grandmaster, no matter what arrangements were made with the Kutsenkos, would not leave before he had met Zharkov across the chessboard. And until Castro came, Zharkov would make sure that the Kutsenkos were guarded at all times so that Gilead could not attempt to spirit them out of Cuba. Then he would deal with Gilead.

  A good plan, he told himself. It was neat, and it was economical. It would work.

  But who the hell was Harry Andrew?

  "The place is crawling with KGB people," Justin said as he turned on the radio loudly. As he spoke, he removed his tuxedo jacket, went to the writing table in the corner of the room, and scrawled on a piece of letter paper, "I made contact with Lena Kutsenko."

  Starcher read the note, nodded, and handed it back. "What did you say?" he whispered.

  Justin wrote, "Gave password. Said we'll talk later. Kutsenkos under close watch all evening."

  Starcher took an ashtray from an end table and tore Justin's note into confetti-size pieces. When he was done, he rose, went to the bathroom, and flushed the pieces of paper away. He came out and said, "You'd better get some rest. You're playing tomorrow?"

  "Yes. One o'clock."

  "Who?"

  "Ribitnov. He's a very good young Russian. I get Zharkov on Friday and Kutsenko on Saturday."

  "Maybe, Justin, we're going to win all our games," Starcher said.

  "Only one of them matters to me," the Grandmaster said.

  Later, Starcher asked, "Did you see Zharkov tonight?"

  "Yes."

  "And?"

  "I didn't kill him," Justin said.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Justin sensed that someone was watching him when he left the second-floor room to go downstairs for a late breakfast.

  He let the stairwell door close behind him, then stopped and waited. A few seconds later, he heard a faint knocking and opened the door carefully.

  A small, dark-haired man in a flowered shirt and jeans was standing in front of the door to his room. His hands were folded in front of him in the manner of someone praying in church.

  The door opened, and the man said, "Dénde está Luis?"

  Justin heard Starcher say, "Sorry, you've got the wrong room." The door closed, and the man came down the hallway as Justin stepped into the hall. The man was buttoning his shirt.

  When he saw Justin, he seemed to hesitate for a split second, then smiled casually in the manner of one stranger passing another in a strange place.

  Justin smiled back, but when he drew abreast of the man, he reached out his right hand and grabbed the clump of muscles between the man's neck and shoulder. The man groaned as Justin squeezed. His knees buckled. Justin reached his other hand around and tore the man's shirt open. A small camera was attached to the man's chest with strips of adhesive tape. Justin ripped the camera loose and pocketed it.

  "Tell your boss no pictures," he said coldly in Spanish. "Now, go."

  The man ran off without argument and vanished into the stairwell. When Justin let himself into the room with a key, Starcher was at the window, shaving while looking out over Havana's broad boulevards. He turned at the sound of Justin's entrance.

  The Grandmaster tossed the camera onto the bed. "Zharkov's apparently interested in you," he said.

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "The man who just came to the door had it. I'm sure your picture's on the film."

  "Russians are nothing if not curious," Starcher said. He put down the razor and stepped outside into the hall with Justin. "I'll keep an eye out," he whispered, "but I'll be gone most of the day."

  "Where will you be?"

  "I'm going to talk to Kael's man, see if he's heard anything."

  "All right. Just be careful," Gilead said.

  "You just win," Starcher said.

  Walking downstairs, Justin thought that he had merely delayed Zharkov's identification of Starcher. The Russians could easily get into their room, take fingerprints, and run them through the KGB computers against the files of all known Western spies. It would be only a matter of a few hours.He hoped that Starcher would be able to come up with something fast to find out what Zharkov, Nichevo, and the other Russians were up to in Cuba. He was worried about the old man's health, and he wanted to get him and the Kutsenkos aboard Saarinen's boat as soon as he could.

  Because right now they were only distractions, keeping him away from his main mission. The mission of his life. The meaning of his life.

  The killing of Alexander Zharkov.

  Justin arrived in the grand ballroom at 12:45 P.M. Ribitnov, the young Soviet expert whom he would play that day, greeted him warmly in halting English and seemed relieved when Justin responded in fluent Russian.

  For the purposes of the chess match, the giant ballroom had been divided into two halves. In one half, folding chairs for some five hundred spectators had been set up, and high on the side walls were positioned giant diagrams of chessboards with large magnetic chessmen. Underneath were display boards for writing each player's moves, so the spectators could follow the games.

  The other half of the ballroom had a chess table and chairs set up in each corner for the four games that would take place at once. In the center of that area, coffee and refreshments were set up for the players and for the tournament officials.

  Justin saw Zharkov standing near the game table in the far corner of the hall, but the Russian did not even glance in Gilead's direction.

  With one of the Cuban chess officials on hand, Justin picked up a black pawn and a white one, shuffled them around while holding his hands behind his back, then clasped one pawn in each closed hand and held his hands in front of him.

  Ribitnov pointed to Justin's closed left hand. Justin opened it to show a white pawn. Ribitnov had won the right to play white, which always moved first in a chess game.

  Just before one o'clock, the two men took seats across from each other at the square, cloth-covered table. The chessboard in front of them was made of alternating inlaid squares of walnut and ash, and the pieces were the classic Staunton design, always used in serious play. The chessmen were weighted with lead slugs for better balance, and their bottoms were covered with felt so they would not scratch the highly polished board.

  The official adjusted the chess clock and placed it on the side of the table between the two men. It was a clock with two faces, and registered individually the time each player took to move. Players were required to make a minimum of forty moves in two and a half hours, and if any player failed to make his fortieth move before his 150 minutes had elapsed, a red flag would dro
p on the face of his clock, and he would lose the game by forfeit. Each player also had a score sheet to keep track of the moves of the games, but often, in time pressure, a player would either forget or not have time to record the game's moves, so the tournament officials assigned to their game kept an extra score sheet, which would serve as the official record of the game.

  At exactly 1:00 P.M., the tournament official asked both men if they were ready. Both nodded, and the official pressed down the button on Justin's side of the chess clock. Pressing that button started the clock ticking on Ribitnov's side.

  The Russian instantly moved the center pawn in front of his king forward two squares and pressed the button on his side of the clock. Justin responded immediately with an identical move, hit the button on Ribitnov's clock. The game had begun.

  King knight to king bishop three. Clock.

  Justin responded with queen knight to queen bishop three square. Clock.

  Bishop to knight five. Ribitnov set the piece down and instantly slapped the clock. Often chess players, to save fractions of a second that might be worth gold in the final moves of a complicated game, will move the piece with the right hand, holding the left hand above the clock. As soon as they have placed the piece and released it, the left hand will slap down and start the opponent's clock immediately. Justin did not do this because he rarely found himself in time trouble.

  Ribitnov had chosen the Ruy Lopez opening for the game. It was a fighting game that yielded white a small advantage coming out of the opening. The main lines of the game were well known to all veteran chess players, but required constant study because no chess opening was static. Openings were continuously being analyzed, and current thinking about the strongest continuations was always being revised. Sometimes low-quality players—patzers, as they were termed—accidentally stumbled on an interesting move that might come to the attention of a master who would analyze it and discover a playing line that had eluded the attention and wits of thousands of chess masters for generations.

  The great American attacking genius, Frank Marshall, once developed a variation in the opening and, according to legend, saved it for five years so he could spring it on an unsuspecting Jose Capablanca, the Cuban world champion. But when he finally got his opportunity, Capablanca calmly crushed Marshall's new variation as if Marshall were a child.

  It proved that chess was the most difficult of games. Playing it well required an encyclopedic memory, the ability to process vast amounts of new material and relate it to other material already in memory storage, and the judgment to know when to veer away from the traditional lines and strike off alone in a new direction.

  But there was another aspect of chess that had nothing to do with brilliance or knowledge or judgment. It was what differentiated chess from any other game on earth. It was the factor that elevated it into the sphere of high art, and its best players to the realm of genius.

  It was a mental condition that those of the West called "flow"—an inexplicable release in the mind of the player, when the game seemed to work itself out automatically, without conscious thought. It was a mental laser beam directed exclusively at the chessboard, compressing the entire universe into sixty-four squares.

  There was a story, allegedly true, that a fire once broke out during a game between two grandmasters. When the critical positions had been reached and played through and the game's outcome was no longer in doubt, the two chess players both eased out of "flow" to see the puddles of water from the firemen's hoses, the overturned furniture and scorched walls. Annoyed, one of the grandmasters complained, "Why is this room so messy? How is somebody supposed to play chess in a place that looks like this?"

  At Rashimpur, Justin had developed the power to focus his energy and concentration, blotting out all distractions and interruptions, but "flow" was more than mere mental discipline. It came unbidden, and its dizzying flight was always unexpected.

  He did not yet feel comfortable at the chessboard. It was the first time he had sat at a chess table across from a human opponent in five years. He forced himself to concentrate, keeping his mind off Zharkov, thinking only of the chess pieces, but he was not at ease.

  The players finished their twenty-fourth move. Justin, while not comfortable, had been playing very well, and the small advantage that Ribitnov had carried through the opening had disappeared. Justin's pieces now controlled the main lines that led to the young Russian's king. For the moment, the king was safe behind a wall of pawns, but constant pressure could break even the strongest of walls.

  Justin was calculating his options, playing methodically, when he felt it, light and perfect, as if a weight had been suddenly lifted from him.

  It was the feeling he had first experienced as a child in the chess match in Paris, when he met and conquered Zharkov and the Russian chess masters who helped him. Now, as then, he accepted the surge of power that directed his moves.

  For Justin Gilead, the rest of the world ceased to exist. All that mattered now were the chessboard in front of him and the lines of force that connected the pieces to one another with dazzling clarity.

  There was nothing else. Nothing intruded as he rested his gray-streaked head on his left hand and studied the board. The position of the game exuded a kind of force field of its own, and now his mind ranged freely into that web of energy, feeling it, understanding the inherent logic and economy in the movement of the game, the pressure of the moves, the ebb and flow of the strategy.

  The "book" moves—those played by centuries of great chess players— no longer counted. The game with Ribitnov had taken on its own dynamic. As they played, Justin and the Russian blazed new ground, carrying the game into directions where not a single game in history had ever been before.

  Eight moves later, Justin advanced his queen until it stood directly in front of the pawn wall that sealed Ribitnov s king off from the rest of the battle going on before him.

  The queen, the most powerful fighting piece on the board, could now be captured by a pawn, the lowliest piece. As his clock ticked away, Ribitnov stared at the position. Was it possible that Justin Gilead had blundered? Had he sacrificed his queen for nothing? Was it possible that there was no checkmate in sight for Gilead? Was the move a colossal mistake?

  The Russian studied the position, reached out to take the queen with a pawn, withdrew his hand, then reached out again. But before he could touch the pawn, the red flag on his clock dropped.

  "Time," the tournament official called. "The game to Mr. Gilead."

  It took Justin a moment to remember where he was and what had just happened. He rose to his feet.

  Ribitnov still stared at the position, then remembered his manners and stood to shake Justin's hand. But he did not remove his gaze from the chessboard.

  "I still don't see it," he said. "Is it there?"

  Justin nodded and answered him in Russian. "The rooks double and the bishop at A-six. Another rook sacrifice and it's over. Thank you, Vyacheslav. You played a wonderful game."

  "Not wonderful enough," the young Russian responded ruefully, then grinned. "I think I liked you better when you were in retirement. No wonder Ivan has been singing your praises to everyone."

  It was just after five o'clock. Together, Justin and Ribitnov went to the refreshment table in the middle of the floor to look at the games of the other players. Kutsenko had already won by forcing a resignation on the twenty-third move of his game with the young American, John Shinnick. Keverin, aged Russian genius, and Gousen, the fiery New Yorker on the American team, had seen their game settle quickly into a well-established situation in which neither side had advantage, and after only nineteen moves, both players had agreed on a draw. This allowed them both to conserve their energy for games and positions from which they might be able to extract a win, and spared them the rigors of spending what often seemed like an eternity in a dull, empty position.

  The only game left was in the far corner of the room where Zharkov and Carey, the American champion, were
locked in a complicated endgame. Each had a king, a bishop, and three pawns, but glancing at the board, Justin felt that Carey stood better because of the placement of his pawns. He mentioned this to Ribitnov, who agreed. "Unless Zharkov can get his king in front," he said.

  A writer for a British chess magazine asked Justin for an interview. "We'd like to know where you've been, Mr. Gilead. What you've been doing."

  "I'm sorry," Justin said. "I haven't played in a very long while, and I'm really quite tired. Perhaps before the match is over, we'll get a chance to talk."

  The reporter nodded politely and drifted away. Justin again looked toward Zharkov's table. He saw the Russian's thick shoulders and bull neck hunched forward. How easy, he thought. How easy to go forward and break that big neck. Kill him and be done with it.

  But his word was his word.

  He turned away from the temptation, which was almost too strong to resist, thanked Ribitnov again, and left the hall to return to his room.

  Tomorrow was another game.

  In his room, Justin carefully touched his fingertips to the Formica shelf next to the sink and felt a slight trace of stickiness. Fingerprint tape had been used to try to lift prints from there. And probably, he decided, throughout the rest of the room, too. By now, Zharkov would have copies of Starcher's prints. He would have to tell Starcher to be careful.

  Justin went down to the main dining room at eight o'clock, hoping to meet Ivan or Lena Kutsenko, but apparently all the members of the Russian chess team and their entourage were eating in their rooms. Justin sat with the three other American players.

  Zharkov had lost his game with Carey. He had tried to block the American's pawn advance with his king, but had failed to protect his own pawns. One of them had fallen, and, faced with a clear pawn deficit and no way to prevent its being promoted into a queen, Zharkov had resigned.

  The score stood in favor of the Americans: two wins, one loss, one draw. Five points for the United States, three points for Russia.