Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller) Read online

  Kael said, "You really don't know what's going on, do you?"

  "Of course not," Starcher said. "I've been sick. Remember?"

  Kael hesitated as if weighing some alternatives. Finally, he said. "Okay. Your replacement, Rand, he got a phone call from somebody saying that the Russians know we've got something big planned in Cuba. And that they got the information from Corfus."

  "Corfus? This has got to be some kind of a trick," Starcher said.

  "Well, maybe. Ever hear of somebody named Lars Saarinen?" He lit another cigarette, coughed, and put it out in an overfilled ashtray that was still smoldering.

  "The name sounds familiar, but—"

  "In connection with Frank Riesling," Kael said.

  "Oh, of course. The ship captain. He used to run Riesling in and out of Russia. Why?"

  Kael took off his glasses, wiped them on a rumpled tissue lying amid the clutter on his desk, and replaced them. "Well, it seems that your man Corfus pulled some strings with the Finns to get Saarinen an exit visa to the States."

  "Saarinen isn't a Soviet. He's a Finnish national. A Finn doesn't need special consideration to get to America," Starcher said.

  "He does if he's in jail," Kael said. "Saarinen was picked up for smuggling. Corfus apparently got him off scot-free."

  "Well, so what?" Starcher said. "Saarinen helped us. Why shouldn't we help him?"

  "How simple you make it all sound," Kael said. "Saarinen's in Miami now. We've got him under surveillance."

  "What the hell for?"

  "Because he sailed his freaking boat across the Atlantic," Kael snapped. "Suppose Corfus was a double and working for the Reds. Then maybe this goddamned Finnish fucking pirate is a Russian spook, too. He's in Miami, dammit. He could be in Cuba in a couple of hours if he wanted to be."

  "That's a lot of ifs," Starcher said. "If Corfus is a spy, if Saarinen's part of his network ... if, if, if... and you still don't know what the hell the Russians are doing in Cuba."

  "Suppose there was something funny about Riesling, too," Kael said.

  "Such as? The man was murdered by the KGB in front of a hundred witnesses," Starcher said.

  "Exactly. What was Riesling doing in Moscow?"

  Starcher began to speak, but Kael stopped him.

  "Riesling did small stuff, right? Scientists, writers, you say maybe a chess player. Nothing big. No hardware, no documents."

  "No, nothing big. Only people," Starcher said, his lips tight.

  "You can can the humanistic slobber," Kael said irritably. "The fact is he wasn't doing anything really big, but the Russkies blew him away as if he'd just pissed on Lenin's tomb."

  "So what do you think happened?"

  "Maybe the KGB was afraid that Riesling had found something out, like the fact that Corfus was a double. Maybe he was going to tell somebody, and maybe they shot him up so he couldn't."

  "That still doesn't say what happened to Corfus," Starcher said.

  "He's probably living in some villa right now on the Crimean, spilling his guts about CIA operations."

  Starcher shook his head. "Everybody's a Red, I guess. Corfus, Saarinen, Riesling. Me, too?"

  "Andy, you know I don't think that, but I think maybe you turned your operation into the freaking British Secret Service with everybody on their honor and not a check on any one of them. You remember? You even started using that chess player who wasn't with us. What was his name, Gilead?"

  "He was a Communist agent, too?" Starcher asked.

  Kael shrugged. "Maybe. I don't think you'll like this, but we're running a tighter ship in Moscow now, Andy."

  Starcher stared at him for long seconds. "Are you going to tell the Director about the possibility of Kutsenko wanting to defect?" he asked.

  "No. We've discussed Cuba. We're staying the hell away from there. Let the Russians bluster and then wind up with egg on their faces when nothing happens. We had a meeting yesterday. We were almost going to stop the American chess team from playing there, but what the hell trouble can chess players cause?"

  Oh, you fool, Starcher thought. He sat for a moment, quietly angry. Corfus was missing. Kutsenko wanted to defect. The head of Nichevo had joined the Russian chess team.

  The Soviets were definitely planning something in Cuba. And these idiots, Kael chief among them, were just sitting still doing nothing. The fools. Didn't they know? Didn't they care?

  But who was Andrew Starcher, anyway, he thought bitterly. He could see the answer in Kael's patronizing glances toward him. Just an old retired CIA man, sick, probably senile, his head filled with old cold war plots. Kael would have a big laugh with his buddies in the coffee shop when he told them about Crazy Andy and all his worries.

  He stood up stiffly and said. "Thanks for the time, Harry. Sorry to bother you."

  "No bother," Kael said. "I'll give you a call sometime when I get some free time. Maybe we can grab lunch when you're feeling better."

  "I'm feeling fine now, Harry," Starcher said.

  The younger man nodded and seemed ready to offer Starcher his hand, but the white-haired Virginian turned away and walked from the office.

  He drove back to the house, smuggled his box of cigars into his room, and sat there smoking until well past dark.

  Something big, something important was going to happen in Cuba, and the CIA didn't know about it and didn't care to know about it. What to do? he asked himself. What to do? The question hung in the darkness as he looked out over the rolling Virginia hillside.

  The genes of two centuries of Starchers who were American patriots, who had fought in every one of the nation's wars, who had given their lives and their honor to their country, answered him. He would have to do something about it himself. And maybe, just maybe, he would not have to do it alone.

  He opened the top drawer of the small dresser and looked inside it. In the back, he found, wrapped in a dirty piece of paper, the medallion of the coiled snake.

  He put it in his jacket pocket and left the room, the box of cigars clutched tightly under his arm.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  New York's Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin was just as Starcher remembered it, a mishmash of boats, dilapidated and grand, jammed together beneath the hot sun of an unusually warm November day. There was activity on the docks, pretty girls in shorts, children, a lot of haggard-looking executive types snarling at the attendants as if they were office boys. Starcher walked past them to the dilapidated blue and white houseboat where a stumpy old woman, her hair now completely white, sat reading a newspaper.

  "Dr. Tauber?" he called from the pier.

  She looked up, adjusted her glasses, rose.

  "I'm Andrew Starcher. We met several years ago."

  "I know who you are," she growled. "And I'd appreciate it if you'd get the hell out of my body bag. What gives you jokers the right—"

  "I don't work for the government anymore," he said tersely.

  She sat back down in her tattered plastic lawn chair with an elaborate rustle of paper. "I'm not surprised," she grumbled. "You're as old as the frigging hills."

  Starcher smiled. "So are you. So you must know how tired I get standing out here. I've come a long way. I'd appreciate a cup of coffee and a chair."

  Dr. Tauber pretended for a moment not to hear, then set her newspaper under a rock with a great sigh of disgust. "You Rhett Butler types never know when enough is enough, do you? Well, get aboard. I won't have it on my conscience that some old fool keeled over from a bum heart in front of my boat. But no coffee." She poured him a martini from a pitcher on the deck alongside her feet. "You coming from Virginia?" Tauber asked. Starcher nodded, the glass to his lips.

  "What for?" She raised a finger directly in front of his eyes. "And don't tell me you're a tourist. You don't have the eyes of a tourist."

  "I'm here to find Justin Gilead," he said.

  She snatched the glass from him. "That's what I thought. Now you can kindly scuttle your butt out of here."

  "Do you
know where he is?"

  "Maybe I do and maybe I don't. But you characters aren't going to get your grubby hands on him again. Not this time. Not after what you did."

  Starcher felt his heart racing. "Then he is alive," he said.

  "I didn't say that."

  "Listen to me." He clasped both her hands in his own. "I have to talk to him. I've got to see him."

  "No." She yanked her hands away. Her face was stony and bitter. "Now you listen to me, mister, and listen good. You're not talking to him; you're not taking him anywhere, understand? He can't talk to you. He can't go anywhere, thanks to you."

  "I—I don't understand."

  "Oh, no? I would have thought you understood better than anybody. You did it to him."

  "Did what? Dr. Tauber, you've got to believe me. Justin Gilead was lost in Poland in 1980. He's officially dead. There are pictures to prove it."

  "You people think you can turn the whole world upside down and inside out, don't you?"

  "We people didn't do it. We had documented facts from the Soviet government."

  "And you took their word for it," she said. "Nobody bothered to look for himself. Nobody bothered to find out if he was dead or not."

  "That's what I'm doing now," Starcher pleaded. "I'm retired, but I'm here looking for him. If he's alive ..."

  She burst out laughing, harsh and loud. "Alive? Alive?" She slapped her hand on his back and pushed him. "I'll show you how alive he is."

  She opened a door with a key and shoved Starcher inside.

  The room was nearly pitch dark, and it took Starcher a moment to see at all. The portholes were covered with nailed boards. There was a small cot inside, no other furnishings. In the far corner crouched a figure, emaciated, withered, mute, his pale eyes luminous in their sockets.

  It was Justin Gilead.

  "Maybe you'd like to give him your regards from the CIA," Dr. Tauber said bitterly, closing the door behind Starcher.

  Starcher stood in the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, staring at the remains of what had once been a man of great promise. He was a dull, frightened creature now, his thin arms encircling his knees, his hair long and untidy. Gilead's fingernails, Starcher noticed, were as long as a woman's. His face, once almost too beautiful, was drawn and etched with deep lines around the slack mouth.

  For a brief, crazy moment, Starcher wished that Riesling had never spoken his last words. It would have spared him this sight of the dead man who hadn't quite died, who had lived on the fringes of death for four years.

  "I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. He realized from Gilead's expression that the words hadn't registered. "Oh, my God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you didn't die." Starcher blew out a gust of air and sat down on the small cot. He felt warm tears streaming down his face. He tried to think of something to say, but his brain would produce no words.

  He stared at the ceiling, felt the blackness around him. Oddly, the darkness seemed to impart a perverse kind of comfort. Perhaps Justin Gilead had found that, too. Starcher hoped so. Whatever had happened in Poland, it had been enough to drive Gilead into this dark hole. He hoped that the young man had found some comfort here.

  He sat in silence for a long time, staring at the figure in the corner, as still as a wood carving.

  No words came. He had traveled all this distance to find Justin Gilead, hoping that Riesling was right, that he was still alive, and now the only thought in his mind was that death would have been more merciful. Anything would have been better than seeing this silent, mad stranger who occupied the shell of what had once been the Grandmaster.

  How could he apologize? What could he say? What words would give enough comfort to make up for the loss of Gilead’s sanity? He had been a young man when Starcher last saw him, and now there was only ... only this thing left.

  "I'm sorry, Justin," he finally said. "For both of us." He got up and walked around the room. Occasionally, a child's shriek from outdoors broke the silence; otherwise there was only the dull clunking of Starcher's footfalls on the wooden floor and the droning of his voice, talking to a man who wasn't listening.

  "I didn't really come to bother you," he apologized. "I thought I'd come here and recruit you all over again. You and me, off on a spy mission to Cuba, to save the world from Zharkov and his men." He laughed bitterly. "I should have known it was just an old man's dream. I'm sorry I wasted your time."

  He turned toward the door, then stopped and pulled the dirty brown paper from his jacket. "I nearly forgot. Here's something that belongs to you." He held it out at arm's length. Justin made no move to take it. Starcher unwrapped the package gingerly and spilled the contents into Justin's lap. For the first time, Justin's head moved.

  He stared at the glittering thing nestled in the space between his chest and his indrawn legs. Finally, his thin arms moving as awkwardly as the wings of a newly hatched bird, he picked it up and put the chain around his neck.

  "Well, that's something, anyhow," Starcher said. "Good luck to you, Justin." He closed the door behind him gently and walked off the boat, nodding silently to Dr. Tauber as he passed.

  Justin Gilead coughed. For a moment, the dim half-light that had surrounded him for as long as he could remember exploded in a frenzy of color and motion. His breath came in violent, ragged gasps. Sweat poured off him, trembling at the tips of his shaking fingers. His eyes opened wide in horror. The pain was horrible, a searing, powerful force that hollowed his body and set his senses on fire.

  Hail to thee, O Wearer of the Blue Hat

  He was floating. He was somewhere long ago, in a faraway mountain lake, guided by a strong hand to a sacred mountain, and in his soul surged the power of a thousand generations, calling to him amid the sweet scent of almonds.

  Hail to Thee

  O Patanjali, the pain of this body is too great

  Wearer of the Blue Hat

  I am not worthy

  Hail to thee

  Not worthy

  Not worthy

  And past was present and present was future and what had been was what now was and would always be. The circle was forming again, and Justin screamed with the agony of it.

  "Help me," he whispered.

  Hail to thee ...

  "Help me, Tagore!"

  I warned you that you, above all others, would suffer, came a voice from deep within him. That among all men, only you would find no solace in this world.

  "I am not the one you sought!" Justin cried out. "I have failed again and again. I have destroyed myself and everyone who was dear to me. I have even killed you, my father." He sobbed. "I am finished. I cannot live in this place. Let me die. Let me go to the fires of hell, but let me die now."

  You are not finished. You have not yet begun, the voice said. Follow him who awakens you, for it is he who shows you the path toward your destiny.

  "I have no destiny!" Justin screamed. "I have lost my youth. I have lost my health, my strength, my will. I cannot do anything now."

  You have waited, O Patanjali. You have waited for the moment when you could face again the Prince of Death, for the moment when you alone could save mankind from his evil.

  "I can save no one," Justin said weakly. "It is too late for me."

  It is not too late. And then the voice came again, Tagore's voice coming to him through the thick film of death and despair:

  It is not too late. It is time.

  It is time.

  It is time.

  Justin became aware that his face was pressed to the wood floor. His fingernails, broken and bloody, left long streaks where they had scrabbled in Justin's pain.

  Had he spoken? Or was this just another madness in a life filled with insanity?

  He sat up. The darkness beckoned to him. Like a woman, it caressed him in its soft, forgetful embrace.

  Come back, Justin, You're safe here. Pick up your terrors, your old friends, and come back…

  But he could never go back. The scent of almonds was too strong, and the medallion, burni
ng like a sun against his chest, filled him with light.

  Starcher turned when he heard the old woman scream.

  "Justin! Come back! Stop him, somebody. He doesn't know what he's doing!"

  Starcher's face contorted in pity at the sight of Justin, withered to skin and bone, walking stiff-legged and bent up the pier. Some men abandoned their work on their boats to stop him.

  "Starcher," he shouted, his voice thin and weak.

  Starcher ran toward him. "Leave him alone," he said, disentangling Justin from strange hands that held him. Dr. Tauber came running forward, but Starcher silenced her with a glance.

  "What is it?" Starcher asked.

  Gilead struggled to speak. "Take me with you." Painfully he pulled himself up to his full height. "You owe me a favor, remember?" His voice was soft, almost inaudible. "I told you long ago I would ask for it."

  Starcher looked the man over. From what he could see, Gilead wouldn't last out the week. But a promise was a promise. "Zharkov's going to Cuba to play chess," Starcher said.

  A look of profound relief passed over Justin's face. "So am I."

  Dr. Tauber could restrain herself no longer. She blurted out, "But why, Justin? It's been so long."

  "Yes. Why?" echoed Starcher.

  Justin Gilead raised his head slowly. His face was far older than its years, the skin ravaged and gray, the thick black hair now matted and long and streaked with white at the temples. But the clear, cold eyes held Starcher's with the same inexplicable authority they had possessed a decade and a half ago.

  "Because it is time," he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Starcher drove southward until the megalithic skyline of New York City was well behind him before he spoke.

  "We'll get you to a doctor."

  The dirty, half-conscious passenger next to him lifted his head weakly. "No doctor," Justin said.