Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller) Read online

  "The reference to the Eye of Rashimpur is obscure, but some scholars believe it to signify the legendary diamond revered by the monks of the sect and held by its priest, along with the coiled snake medallion, as symbols of his office."

  Starcher closed the books and went to Dr. Tauber's apartment. When she opened the door, he handed her the books.

  "Do you expect me to believe this?" he asked the professor.

  She took the books from him. "I don't expect you people to believe anything. It was my obligation to show you the truth, even if it doesn't mean anything to you. The curse of the educator."

  Starcher stood silently in the foyer of the apartment crammed with Far Eastern artifacts. "I'd still like to ask you some more questions."

  Tauber laughed. "So you're not as closed-minded as you're supposed to be, after all." She walked away from him, into the apartment. "Come in. Sit down. Coffee?"

  He shook his head. She poured him some anyway.

  "Dr. Tauber, I'd better explain to you now that if you're involved with this man in any sort of activity subversive to the United States or its intelligence services, the consequences are going to be unpleasant."

  "Here they come. The threats. Cream and sugar?"

  "You don't seem to understand. I was thinking of using this man with the Central Intelligence Agency. I'm not about to accept a bunch of hocus-pocus as adequate background."

  "You're the one who doesn't understand, Mr. Starcher. Justin Gilead is probably the most unusual man in the world. He speaks twelve languages. He can run twenty miles without breaking a sweat, for God's sake. He can swim more than a mile underwater." She was shouting. "You want the truth about him? I wish I could give it to you. I know that when Rook’s Tour sprung a leak, he dived down under it and stayed there twenty minutes and patched it. And he wasn't wearing air tanks. You want the truth? I don't know. Everything he's told me about Rashimpur checks out with what little I know, and his knowledge of the area, in which I do have some expertise, is far too accurate to be extracted from books. Aside from that, he's twenty-six years old. He might be lying, but in my opinion, no one could know as much as he does without firsthand experience."

  "He said he'd work for us for nothing, but that he'd want a favor someday," Starcher said.

  Dr. Tauber shrugged.

  "What's the favor?" Starcher asked.

  "Damned if I know," she said.

  "Do you know where Gilead is now?"

  She was silent.

  "I should have guessed." Starcher said.

  Rook's Tour was a dilapidated houseboat whose blue and white paint was peeling off in strips.

  "Justin Gilead," Starcher called from the pier.

  After a few moments the young man he had talked with at Langley appeared. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Over the shirt hung the gold coiled snake medallion.

  "I'm Andrew Starcher. I met you at Langley." He extended his hand. Gilead refused it.

  "Yes. You were the last of the pests," he said coldly. "Did you think of more questions?"

  "The same one I asked before. What favor will you want?"

  "Same answer as before," Gilead said. "I can't tell you specifically."

  "Tell me generally."

  "Why should I?" Gilead asked.

  "Because I'm going back to Europe in a few days. Because if what you've told us is true, I could probably use you."

  "Where in Europe?" Gilead asked. His eyes had not left Starcher's throughout the entire conversation. He hadn't seemed to blink.

  "I'm going back to Paris. After that, I should be assigned to Moscow," Starcher said.

  "Russia," Gilead said. "All right. There's a Russian named Alexander Zharkov. Do you know who he is?"

  "Yes," Starcher said, trying to disguise his surprise. "Do you?"

  "Yes. He is the son of Vassily Zharkov who is the head of Nichevo. He'll take over when his father dies."

  "What do you know about Nichevo?" Starcher asked.

  "Not as much as you do," Gilead said. "But I know what it is and what it does."

  "And what's this favor you're going to want?" Starcher asked.

  "Someday I'm going to have to kill Alexander Zharkov," Gilead said. "When that day comes, I'll want you to tell me where to find him."

  "That's it?" Starcher said. "That's the favor?"

  "Yes."

  "You won't want any help?"

  "No," Gilead said. "I won't need any help."

  "What do you have against Alexander Zharkov?" Starcher asked.

  "He stole something that belonged to me," Gilead said.

  "What?"

  "My life." He fingered the medallion around his neck.

  "Is that the real coiled snake of Rashimpur?" Starcher asked.

  "Yes," Gilead said.

  "I don't know whether I believe you or not," Starcher said.

  "You will," Justin Gilead said.

  Before going to France, Starcher returned to Langley to find something out, and the next day he went again to see Gilead on Rook's Tour.

  "Bad news," he said. "I'm afraid our deal's off."

  "Why is that?" Gilead asked. He was busy on the deck of the boat splicing rope, his back to Starcher.

  "Alexander Zharkov," Starcher said and got a moment's satisfaction when he saw Gilead's back stiffen and the young man turn toward him, fixing him with his cold blue eyes. "He's probably dead," Starcher added.

  "Oh?" Gilead said blandly. "Who told you that?" Starcher could have sworn that he had seen the young man sigh in relief.

  "I just came back from Langley. Zharkov was out on some kind of secret army patrol in India about eight months ago. Some border problem. The whole patrol vanished. Everyone's presumed dead."

  "Zharkov's alive," Gilead said.

  "You don't seem to understand," Starcher said. "The whole patrol, Zharkov included, vanished. Not a word from them for eight months."

  "You don't seem to understand," Gilead said. "The patrol is dead. But Zharkov's alive."

  "How do you know that?" Starcher snapped. Gilead's patronizing attitude was beginning to annoy him. "How do you know the patrol's dead? How do you know Zharkov's alive, when he's been lost in the damned mountains for eight months?"

  "I know the patrol's dead because I killed them," Gilead said simply.

  For a moment, Starcher was stunned speechless. Then he said, "And Zharkov?"

  "I didn't kill him," Gilead said. "I let him live."

  "Why?"

  Gilead turned back to the large coils of rope on the deck of the houseboat, and bent down to resume his work. He spoke quietly, almost as if to himself, but Starcher heard every chilling word clearly.

  "Because it isn't time yet," he said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Starcher had almost forgotten about Justin Gilead. He had been five months at his post in Paris, the first in what he knew would be a long career-concluding series of desk jobs, and he hated it. Of course the work, interesting or not, was important. Coordinating European activities of the CIA and "friendlies"—pro-Western nations—was critical to maintain the West's position in the world, particularly with Nichevo roaming about, but still Starcher longed to be in the field again.

  He kept filing routine requests for reassignment, which were routinely rejected. Then one gray wintry afternoon, his deputy came into his office in the American embassy and put a single piece of pink paper on his desk.

  "One of our analysts just put this together," he said. "I figured you'd be interested."

  The brief report had been culled from Soviet publications, internal information, and hints picked up by men in the field.

  Alexander Zharkov was alive. According to the memo, Zharkov had shown up in Moscow and reported that he and his entire patrol had been ambushed by hostile tribesmen while on secret duty in India a year earlier. Zharkov had been injured and had suffered amnesia. For a year, not knowing who he was, he was cared for by the monks at a small monastery in the Himalayas. Then his memory returned. Before
leaving the monastery— because he did not know what he might have told the monks while an amnesiac—he "neutralized" the monks. There was a possibility, the report said, that Zharkov would be presented with a medal for his "bravery and heroism."

  "Thanks," Starcher said and dismissed his deputy with a nod. When the young man left, Starcher read the report again. He didn't believe Zharkov's story for a moment, but there seemed no doubt that the young Russian was alive. And Justin Gilead had known.

  How?

  Had his story been true?

  Had Gilead himself slain the entire patrol and let Zharkov go free? If that was true, where had Zharkov been for the past year?

  Justin Gilead showed up at the office that day, and Starcher had a chance to ask him those questions. But to Starcher's announcement that Alexander Zharkov was alive, Gilead only said, "I told you that. Don't give me facts I already know. That's not our deal."

  The CIA chief's attempts to get any more information out of Gilead were exasperatingly fruitless. Finally, Starcher said, "Where have you been?" He noted that despite the chill weather, Gilead was wearing only a suit jacket. His shirt was open at the throat; the snake amulet hung around his neck.

  "I've been playing chess," Gilead said. "I had to get my grandmaster ranking, so I could play anywhere. I'm ready to work now."

  "Just like that?" Starcher said. "You think it's all that easy? You haven't been trained."

  "In what?"

  "Self-defense. Weapons. Codes. Tradecraft. How to know you're being followed. What to do about it. So many things."

  "Those are all fine for your employees, Mr. Starcher," Gilead said calmly. "But I'm not one of your employees. I'm a chess player." He reached into his jacket pocket, extracted a slip of paper, and handed it to Starcher.

  "That's a list of the tournaments I'll be playing in for the next six months," Gilead said. "I'll keep in touch. If there's anything you want done near any of those cities, you just let me know. If it helps to disrupt anything Nichevo's doing, so much the better." He smiled; it was a rich smile that involved his entire face, and it warmed Starcher as much as Gilead's blue eyes usually chilled him. "Don't worry so much. I'll be all right," Gilead said.

  "You'll be a piece of meat that I throw to the dogs," Starcher grumbled.

  Gilead answered, "Some meat's poison, and some dogs die." He rose from his chair, and Starcher said, "Wait. We haven't talked about anything yet. Expenses. Salary. Anything."

  "I don't need any money, Mr. Starcher," Gilead said as he walked toward the door. "I just want to work, and I want you to live up to your end of the bargain."

  Starcher nodded and rose from behind his desk. He picked up the one-page memorandum on Zharkov and walked across the room to hand it to Justin. "I thought you might want to see this," he said.

  Gilead read it quickly, his face impassive, then handed it back. "The part about killing a monastery of monks is true," he said. "The rest is all lies."

  "They're giving him a medal," Starcher said.

  Gilead again fingered the amulet around his neck. He said, "I've already given him a medal to wear. He has it on his throat."

  When Gilead left, Starcher went back to his desk, opened its bottom left drawer and took out a file folder. Inside it, he put Justin Gilead's tournament schedule, but before he returned it to the drawer, he penned across the top: "The Grandmaster."

  That was 1971. Justin Gilead, at twenty-seven, was to become Starcher's best field agent.

  At first, Starcher used Gilead very sparingly, and on only the smallest and safest of projects. Pick up a document in one country and deliver it to another, interview someone who claimed to know about some internal frictions in one of the Soviet Union's satellite states.

  Starcher ran these operations privately, keeping Gilead's involvement secret even from his superiors at Langley. Time, Starcher knew, was on his side. The world of intelligence and espionage was passing from its monopoly by paid, salaried agents into a freebooting world of informers, dissidents, interested citizens, and ideological volunteers. The day was not long off when a Justin Gilead would not be dismissed out of hand by the CIA, but welcomed to work with them.

  Meanwhile, Gilead was handling all his assignments from Starcher with efficiency and quiet competence. The big break came in 1972 when President Nixon was planning to visit Communist China. The CIA was quaking, knowing beyond a doubt that Russia would be planning something to prevent the two other superpowers from forging any kind of alliance, so Langley put out a nervous call to its administrative personnel all over the world to report any contacts they might have with anyone who lived in China, worked there, visited there, who might have heard rumors about what was being planned. Starcher sent in the name of Justin Gilead.

  At the last minute, on the eve of Nixon's flight, the CIA got word from an informer network that Chinese assassins on Nichevo's payroll were standing by in Hong Kong, ready to kill the American president. Langley flooded the area with personnel, looking for the killers. Andrew Starcher made a quiet call to Justin Gilead, who was playing in Hong Kong in a Far East chess open tournament. The would-be assassins vanished, as if they had slipped off the edge of the earth. When the smoke of confusion had cleared away, it was obvious even to Langley that Justin Gilead had somehow been responsible.

  Starcher was called back to CIA headquarters to discuss the matter. He acknowledged that he had been using Gilead on small missions for over a year. "I was testing him," he explained.

  "Where did he come from?" the director of operations said.

  "He came here one day to sign up, but it didn't work. Later on, he looked me up in France, and I thought it was worth a try. He globe-trots around, and being a chess player is a great cover."

  The meeting ended with Starcher being commended wryly for his wonderful way with recruitment and being told not to keep Justin Gilead to himself. "If he's that good, let's all use him," the chief of operations said.

  "It's okay by me," Starcher said.

  But it wasn't okay by Gilead. The Grandmaster himself told that to the first CIA official who came to talk to him. "I work only for Starcher," Gilead said.

  "Why's that? We're all on the same side," the CIA official said.

  And Gilead, who did not want to tell anyone at Langley that he and Starcher had made a deal for Alexander Zharkov, said simply, "I trust him. I don't trust any of you."

  So Gilead's assignments continued to come from Starcher, but now, more often than not, they were given to Starcher by the operations desk in Langley.

  There was the Russian spy ring in Canada, the Nichevo agent in Indonesia, the Panama Canal, the South African arms supply line. Gilead was on the scene when Frank Riesling was almost caught in East Germany, and somehow the Grandmaster got him out, leaving Riesling babbling about somebody who ripped his way through the steel walls of a building.

  Throughout the CIA, the legend of the Grandmaster grew. Starcher was, at first, proud of it. But then he grew fearful. If Justin Gilead's work for the Company was made known, he would become a prime target for the KGB. Or for Nichevo, whose plans he seemed most often to thwart.

  Gilead was playing in a tournament in Belgrade when there was an explosion and fire in the hotel he was staying in. Gilead's room had seemed to be the center of the blast and was literally blown apart. No sign of his body could be found.

  Starcher put in a nervous twenty-four hours before Gilead showed up at his office in Paris.

  "I thought you were dead," Starcher said.

  "Obviously not."

  "But they tried to kill you?" Starcher asked.

  Gilead nodded.

  "Justin, this is getting too dangerous. I think it's time you retired. You're not getting paid to do this."

  Gilead shook his head. "It wasn't the first time they tried to kill me," he said.

  Starcher sat back heavily in his chair. "It's happened before?"

  "A half-dozen times," Gilead said. "Don't worry about it. I don't."

  "Ho
w the hell can you sit there and tell me you're not concerned about the Russians trying to kill you six, seven times?"

  "Because they can't do it," Gilead said. He rose from his chair. "Stop looking so worried," he said, then told Starcher that he was taking the next few weeks off and would be in Paris. "My chess game needs work. If you need me, I'll be at the Strand Hotel."

  The next day, Starcher got word that Vassily Zharkov had died and his son Alexander had been named to head Nichevo. He went to the Strand to meet Gilead and told him the news in the cocktail lounge.

  Gilead nodded. "Good," he said.

  His time was coming. He went back to his room and his chessboard.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It took Starcher a moment to realize where he was.

  He saw the American guard standing near the door of the Moscow hospital room. The fever had broken. He felt cold and wondered if he was dying. For nearly twenty years he had harbored a secret fear that there might be a God and that if there was, he would not approve of Starcher's way of life. He had even, in his less coherent moments beginning with that day at Langley in 1970, speculated that on his day of judgment he would be forced to confront not Jehovah but Justin Gilead.

  It must be close now, he thought. Death's embrace must be terribly close to bring the Grandmaster into his thoughts with such insistence.

  He should have objected to Gilead's being used so frequently. If he had not permitted the CIA to run him so often, the boy might have had a chance to live a little longer.