Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller) Read online

"It was my father's advice: 'What you never wish found, commit only to your own memory.'" He pulled into a small side street and stopped the car. He scanned the street and said, "Good, here's my man."

  A tall, thin man with an uncombed scraggly beard was approaching the car. "That is Felix," Zharkov told Katarina. "He will take you to Primorsk, and the two of you will get on a trawler. At sea, you'll transfer to another ship, which will take you to Cuba." At her worried look, he said, "Don't fret. You'll be perfectly safe. Felix is Nichevo, and he's been in Cuba many times."

  Katarina's pertness had dissolved. She looked down at her hands. "Why does it have to be this way?" she asked, choked.

  He touched her face. There was no answer that would make this easier. “Things will not always be this way,” he said. When he had kept my promise to Varja, he knew, everything will have changed.

  "When will I see you again?" she asked as she opened the passenger door of the car.

  "Soon. When I come to Cuba. Go now. There isn't much time."

  She threw her arms around him and kissed him until he pushed her away. Then she stepped from the car, closed the door quietly, and walked off with Felix toward a waiting car down the street.

  Maria Lozovan had not wasted any time. Her broken front tooth had been repaired when she let Zharkov into her apartment. She was dressed in fashionable Western-style pants and a thin silk blouse through which he could see her bare breasts.

  She looked at him triumphantly and said, "I trust you've come to apologize."

  "I've come to do what the Vozhd ordered me to do," Zharkov said.

  "Good," she said with satisfaction. "It is good for a man like you to crawl a little. It reminds you that you are human, after all."

  "Not here, though," Zharkov said.

  She arched a penciled eyebrow. "Where, then?"

  "Ostrakov's. I want a witness to my abject apology and my admission of wrongdoing," Zharkov said.

  He waited until she got a fur coat, then led her to his car. A few minutes later, they were speeding toward the outskirts of Moscow.

  "This isn't the way to Ostrakov's," she said, an edge of panic creeping into her voice.

  "No, it isn't," Zharkov said, and when she turned to look at him questioningly, he punched her jaw viciously and she slumped unconscious against the passenger door.

  Slow down.

  The big Chaika almost skidded on the snow-slicked road. Ahead, barely visible through the storm, stood the cabin and, beyond it, the deep woods where Corfus's body lay in the ravine.

  Maria Lozovan had regained consciousness. She cringed in terror as Zharkov dragged her roughly from the car and pulled her through the snow toward the ravine. He tossed her into the snow, then took a long branch to brush snow away from Corfus's already frozen body. "That's your work, bitch," he snarled.

  "What are we doing here? Where is Ostrakov?"

  "I thought this would be cozier with just the two of us," Zharkov said. "As to what we're doing, we're just taking a quiet stroll in the country. No acid on the eyelids, no cigarette burns to mar your well oiled skin."

  "I have always been loyal," she protested huskily. Tears formed in her eyes as she rose to her knees.

  "To yourself, Maria." He shrugged. "Unfortunately, that is not enough. You betrayed me to Ostrakov. Later, if it is in your interest, you will betray us both to the Americans."

  "I wouldn't..."

  "Who can foretell the future?" Zharkov said smoothly. "Particularly when you have none."

  She pressed her hands together in front of her, as if she were in church, a supplicant to God.

  "Why are you doing this, Zharkov? Why?"

  He liked looking at her, kneeling there before him that way. "You wouldn't understand," he said.

  "I will. I will."

  And because it amused him, he said, "All right. Forty-one years ago, two boys were born. They shared the same birthdate, but they were to face very different destinies."

  She stared at him. Her face was expressionless, but she nodded to urge him to continue.

  "Because they were not simply boys. Each was the latest in a line of ancestors that goes back centuries. One was to become the Wearer of the Blue Hat; the other was to be the Wearer of the Black Hat. Each was to serve a different god. And they would battle, as all those who came before them have battled through the centuries. The winner will possess the world."

  He stopped and waited. Finally, Maria Lozovan said, "Who? Who are these two?"

  "You know only one. I am the Wearer of the Black Hat, and when the other is dead, the world will belong to me."

  She was weeping again, and suddenly her life no longer amused him.

  "Look down there," he said, pointing toward the ravine. "Look at your handiwork."

  She turned and stared blankly down at Corfus's corpse. Beside her, Zharkov drew the Tokarev from his coat and waited. He waited to see her eyes. And when she looked up at him finally and saw the barrel of the weapon inches from her face, and a flash of terror and panic glazed the copper-colored irises, Zharkov had what he wanted.

  Feeling the satisfaction of justice, he fired. Her forehead blew away, spattering two nearby trees with red.

  He kicked her body into the ravine atop the American’s and brushed snow over both corpses. He turned and left without a backward glance.

  Sergei Ostrakov's voice was bluff and hearty as it sounded over the telephone answering machine in Zharkov's apartment.

  "Alyosha, this is Sergei. I don't know, but I think there might be some misunderstanding between us. We've got to get together to clear it up. Call me as soon as you get in." And then, with a little trace of desperation, he added, "No matter how late it is."

  He was tired, and he thought of ignoring the call until the next day, but finally he called Ostrakov's home and told the KGB officer's aide that Ostrakov should come right over.

  When Ostrakov arrived, Zharkov was sitting at the chessboard in the dining room.

  "Alyosha, how are you?" he began, his voice as hearty and earnest as it had been in his message.

  Zharkov turned in his chair. "You have spoken to the premier?”

  Ostrakov nodded. "He wanted to be sure that you and I—"

  Zharkov interrupted him brusquely. "Have you brought the tapes you made in Velanova's apartment?"

  "Yes," Ostrakov said. There was a faint quaver in his voice.

  "Put them on the dining table."

  Ostrakov took a small paper bag from the leather briefcase he was carrying and placed it on the table. "They're in there. All of them. And no copies were made. None. None at all."

  "Ostrakov, if you ever try that with me again, you will be a dead man," Zharkov said.

  The KGB officer stood silently near the table.

  "Is that clear?"

  Ostrakov was silent for a moment, then nodded.

  "Maria Lozovan is dead," Zharkov said.

  "I guessed she would be."

  "She knew too much about Corfus's disappearance," Zharkov said.

  Ostrakov nodded. "She couldn't be trusted with that kind of secret," he agreed.

  "Anyone else who might talk about it will also be killed," Zharkov said.

  "No one else knows," Ostrakov said.

  "Except you," Zharkov said. "Think about that for a while." He turned away from the KGB officer and looked again at the chessboard. "You'll forgive me for not offering you a drink, but I'm busy," he said in dismissal.

  A few moments later, he heard the door to his apartment open. Then he heard a hiss from Ostrakov. "It's simple, isn't it? Simple for all you smart people. I don't know how you got away with it this time, Zharkov. But you won't always."

  "We'll see," Zharkov said without looking up.

  "Just one last thing, Colonel," Ostrakov said. "You might think you were very smart in trying to get Velanova out of town."

  Zharkov paused. He could feel himself holding his breath.

  "But she's dead, too."

  Zharkov turned to stare at O
strakov.

  There was a flicker of frightened triumph in the KGB man's eyes. "You didn't know that, did you? Well, she's dead. They found her body tonight alongside the railroad tracks. Someone stabbed her."

  "Who did it?" Zharkov asked.

  "Who knows? With a train full of criminals, anyone could have," Ostrakov said. "You shouldn't have sent her to Siberia."

  Zharkov concentrated on looking sorrowful. "I thought she'd be safe," he said.

  "You thought wrong." Ostrakov turned triumphantly and walked out the door.

  Zharkov turned back to the chessboard where he stared at the pieces, arranged in the play of Justin Gilead's last game.

  It had all worked out for the best, he thought. His position was stronger than ever. Katarina was on her way to safety. The day would come, perhaps sooner than he could even expect, when he would lead this giant nation. And more, perhaps. Varja's power was unlimited. He could set his sights beyond Russia, beyond the East, if he wished.

  Oh, yes. Beyond the East.

  But first there was the Grandmaster to finish off. That was next.

  Before he went to bed that night, Zharkov made three telephone calls. The next day there was a brief item in Izvestia:

  Boris Godofsky has been forced by illness to withdraw from the Russian chess team, which will meet an American team in a challenge match in Havana, Cuba, in sixty days.

  His place will be taken by Army Colonel Alexander Zharkov. Zharkov is considered one of the Soviet Union's finest players, and this match will mark his return to top-level competition after an absence of many years.

  The Russian team will be headed by Ivan Kutsenko, world chess champion.

  Zharkov read the news item in his office and smiled. The game had begun.

  BOOK FIVE

  THE GAME

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Andrew Starcher felt like a very old man, lying in the same bed he had slept in as a child. Except for the funeral array of flowers sent by family friends— most of whom had never met him and had no idea what he'd done with his sixty-six years on earth—the room was exactly as it had been the day Starcher left for boarding school. The cheerful blue and white wallpaper, the crisp white curtains, the tiny Hepplewhite writing desk sitting beneath the Remington painting depicting a scene from a buffalo hunt.

  Below, at the bottom of the curving walnut staircase, the bell was ringing again. More visitors. In a house with sixteen permanent family residents, many of whom were involved with the government in one quiet way or another, Starcher and his convalescence were only a minor facet in the day-to-day activities, a fact for which he was immensely grateful. For a man who had lived almost the whole of his life in secrecy, it was abhorrent to lie in this child's room in pajamas, on display for anyone to see. He despised the cheerful intrusions of the well-wishers who cared even less than he did about the physical condition of an old man come home to die.

  As soon as he was able, he'd bribed the gardener to fit a bolt onto the bedroom door so that he could lock out the visitors, but his sister had gone on the warpath. Finally, she agreed to keep people off the second floor until he was well enough to move back into his own house.

  It was the insignificant victory of an old man turned crotchety with infirmity.

  He lay on the bed day after endless day, working crossword puzzles and reading magazines and wishing, now, that even the unwanted visitors would reappear for a moment or two.

  To amuse himself, he had copies of Izvestia delivered daily, and he read carefully the growing crescendo of Russian warnings to the American imperialists that Cuba was not to be tampered with. What was it all about? Starcher wondered. He read The Washington Post and The New York Times every day, too, but there were no reports of any unusual American activity concerning Cuba.

  The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that the Russians were planning something, some kind of a swindle. He thought for a moment about calling Corfus in Moscow, but he realized immediately that such an act was ridiculous. Corfus might not even be assigned to Moscow anymore, and if he was, he certainly wouldn't tell Starcher anything over an open transatlantic telephone line.

  In the fourth week of his convalescence, he read another bitter Russian attack complaining about "growing evidence of American provocation" against Cuba, and he realized that, without his work, he was a useless thing.

  He got out of bed, dressed, stared at himself in the mirror for several minutes, and decided something was missing. Then he stole a family car from the driveway and smoked a cigar clandestinely as he drove away from the house. It was a deep and smoky Cohiba. It made him feel better than the gallons of medication the doctors had poured into him.

  He decided not to go back to that child's room again.

  One of the guards at the entrance to the Langley complex was an old-timer.

  "Well, well, Mr. Starcher. Long time no see."

  Starcher puffed his cigar between his teeth. "Just back for a visit, I'm afraid."

  The guard smiled sympathetically. "I'm due to retire next year myself. The time sure goes fast." Starcher waved and started to drive through the gate, but the guard stopped him. "I've got to ask you who you're coming to see, sir."

  "Oh ... of course." He was an outsider now. No special privileges. Langley was no longer home, any more than his family's house was. "Harry Kael," he said, "Director of Security."

  "Director of Operations now. Is he expecting you?"

  "No ... will you buzz him?" An appointment to see Kael, of all people. The time sure did go fast.

  Kael was a little fatter, a little balder, but in general the same fast-talking overgrown college boy he'd always been.

  "Starcher, you old fart," he said cheerfully. "Didn't expect to find you lurking around here for another six months. What'd you do, fire all your doctors? And put out that cigar. It's not good for you."

  "At my age, all the things that are good for you are disgusting," Starcher said. He gestured around the big office. "So when did this all happen?"

  "Couple of months. Just about when you got sick. Going pretty well."

  "Need any help?"

  Kael smiled and shook his head. There was pity in his eyes.

  "I didn't think so. How's Moscow?" Starcher asked.

  "Still not applying for statehood, if that's what you mean. New guy we sent over to replace you's got his hands full. Rand. You know Rand? Hungary, 1956."

  Starcher nodded. "He'll be all right. And Corfus is a good number two."

  Kael mumbled something and lit a cigarette.

  "What's the matter? Anything wrong with Corfus?"

  "Well..." He inhaled deeply. "Forget it, Andy. You don't need to know this kind of shit anymore."

  "If it's about the man I left in charge of my job, I want to know about it. What's happened to Corfus?"

  Kael hesitated for a long moment. "All right," he said at last. "Corfus is missing. Has been since before you left Moscow. The Russian police are looking for him. That's the official line."

  "What's the unofficial line?"

  "Classified."

  "Well, maybe you'd better declassify it to me."

  "You know I can't do that, Andy. Even for you."

  Starcher rose angrily. "Don't give me that crap. If Corfus has been missing since I was in that Russian hospital, then he never got the information about Cuba to this Rand fellow."

  Kael choked on his cigarette smoke. "What about Cuba?"

  "Maybe that's classified," Starcher said, and immediately felt childish. "All right. Remember Frank Riesling, the agent who was getting some Soviet bigwigs out through Finland?"

  "The one who got blown away in the hotel? How can I forget? The Reds called it a mugging. If that was—"

  Starcher waved him down. "Never mind about that. The point is, Corfus figured out who Riesling was trying to get out of Moscow that day. We weren't sure, but it's very possible that the man was Ivan Kutsenko."

  Kael looked blank.

  "Kutsenko,"
Starcher repeated, searching for a reaction. "The world chess champion."

  "Oh," Kael said finally, and stubbed out his cigarette.

  "Oh? That's all?"

  "What's the big deal about a chess player?"

  "Jesus Christ," Starcher sighed. "Don't you guys follow anything but Monday night football? In the Soviet bloc countries, chess is the most prestigious peacetime confrontation there is. It's a very big deal. And the best chess player in the world might want to come over."

  Kael said nothing.

  "If Kutsenko were a ballet dancer, you'd be jumping at the chance," Starcher said grumpily.

  "It's not that... How do you know he wants to come over?"

  "Long story. But before he died, Riesling said something that we think was a recognition code. 'In Havana, the sun is hot, but it's good for the sugar crop.' The World Open Chess Tournament's going to be held in Havana. I think Kutsenko'll be waiting for us. An easy pickup, and a big slap in the face for the Russians." He puffed mightily on his cigar. It was good to be in the thick of things again. "So what do you think?"

  "Screw Kutsenko. I'm not even going to take it up with the Director."

  "Why not?"

  "Unreliable source."

  "Who? Me? Riesling? Corfus?"

  "Corfus," Kael said quietly. "See, the official line about him being missing may not be accurate. Hell, Andy, let's just leave it at that, okay?"

  "No," Starcher said. "Don't do this to me, Harry. I was your senior officer when you came here, and I was Corfus's immediate superior. If something about Corfus is suspect, I have the right to know about it. Hell, I might have started it."

  "All right, all right," Kael said. "If it's serious, you'll end up being involved, anyway. The fact of the matter is, the Russians have been acting funny about Cuba."

  "I know. I've been reading Izvestia," Starcher said.

  "Naturally, I should have known. Anyway, the Russians have ships all around Cuba. Not doing anything. Just sitting there in the water, waiting."

  "For what?" Starcher asked. "We haven't done a thing in Cuba since 1962 besides take in refugees they didn't want."