Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller) Read online

  He was the chess champion of the world, famed for the subtle, far-reaching brilliance of his play and his total nervelessness at the chessboard. Yet, Riesling thought with disgust, here he sat as twitchy as a drunk driver in a police lockup. It was dark outside, but Kutsenko was still wearing sunglasses. Probably he thought they were a disguise. All he needed was a hand-painted sign on his chest: "Arrest me. I'm trying to defect to the West."

  He couldn't look more suspicious if he had a stick of dynamite in his mouth, Riesling thought. The American agent brushed some imaginary lint from the lapel of the East German-made topcoat he wore and removed his homburg. He hung up the clothing, then with a feigned expression of surprise, greeted the chess player like a long-lost acquaintance.

  "Do join me," Kutsenko said, rising, his eyes behind the dark glasses darting around the room.

  Unobtrusively, Riesling slipped into a seat at the chess player's table. It faced the window, and Riesling was better prepared to spot a tail than was Kutsenko, who looked as if he were about to collapse in a fit of nerves.

  Smiling, he ordered a beer as he cased the room. Three other tables were occupied, by old men, mostly. A single man who walked with a limp stood at the counter and sipped coffee. No white stocking cap. It had been a delusion, after all. Burnout.

  "Our arrangements are canceled," Riesling said softly.

  The chess player's face fell. "But my wife," he protested. "We have prepared everything."

  "I'm sorry. It's not possible. My people will be in touch with you about an alternate route."

  "When?" Kutsenko was on the verge of tears. "Already they're watching me. My wife was discharged from her post. No reason was given."

  Riesling felt his stomach turn a slow revolution. "Recently?"

  "Today."

  Blown. It was all blown.

  Riesling smiled tightly as the waitress placed the stein in front of him. "I understand you will be playing in a chess tournament in Havana later this year," he said, struggling to look as if they were exchanging casual pleasantries.

  "Perhaps. One is never sure…"

  "Be there. With your wife. I'll arrange for one of our men to meet you."

  "How will I know him?" Kutsenko said, choking in fear.

  Riesling thought for a moment, then said, "He'll talk about the weather.

  He'll say, 'In Havana, the sun is hot, but it's good for the sugar crop.' Can you remember that?"

  Kutsenko nodded. "Will you excuse me for a moment?" Riesling asked, rising. He made his way toward the restroom at the back at a leisurely pace.

  Riesling had selected the cafe as a meeting place because of its layout. Two crude wooden partitions separated the lavatories from the dining area. Beyond them, the small kitchen led directly to a rear exit. Without doubt, Riesling thought, the cafe had lost more than one customer through the kitchen door, since it couldn't be spotted from the dining room. Riesling went out silently, leaving the chess player to figure out his departure for himself.

  In the cafe, the man standing at the counter crooked a finger toward the front window.

  On Gorky Street, the immense Tchaikovsky Concert Hall glittered in the sunlight, flanked by the Mossovyet and the Sovremennik Youth Theater. To Riesling's right rose the tall tower of the Samarkand Hotel.

  It would have to be the Samarkand now, he thought. He was blown, because surely the Russians had someone watching Kutsenko. It was just a matter of time now. Coatless but sweating profusely, he walked down the wide boulevard with what semblance of casualness he could muster, scanning the long lines of workers waiting outside the meat markets, stamping and exhaling clouds like steaming horses.

  He didn't know what prompted him to turn around, to search the crowd behind him. The instinct was so ingrained in Riesling that he never questioned it. He was a professional.

  So it was that he was not horrified or even terribly surprised at the certain knowledge that he was going to die.

  Behind him, less than a block away, was the man in the white stocking cap.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mike Corfus felt like a connoisseur as he swirled his brandy near the candlelight. The bar of the Samarkand was elevated a few feet off the lobby floor, and from his vantage point at the railing, Corfus could watch both the front and the side doors of the hotel.

  He liked the Samarkand, with its Byzantine flourishes and pre-Revolutionary charm. It was part of another Russia, peopled with aristocrats who walked these floors in jewel-buckled shoes, where the silk gowns of ladies wearing tiaras rustled softly as they moved.

  Corfus smiled to himself. Sometimes his own naiveté amused him. In czarist Russia, he would have been a serf. He even looked like a serf. Times didn't change that much.

  In the lobby below, a German tourist with a camera dangling around his neck posed his squat wife in front of a mural depicting Tamerlane as he led his Mongol archers to victory along the Silk Road.

  "Ein Augenblick," the German shouted, waving the other occupants of the lobby toward the corners while he adjusted his camera. "Gehen Sie heraus!"

  Corfus could tell by the facial features of the people in the lobby that most of them were Russians. They ignored the German's commands to move out of his way.

  "Another?" the bar waitress asked indifferently, gesturing to Corfus's half-empty glass.

  "No, thanks. I'd like to take my time," he answered in flawless Russian. The waitress sneered and lumbered away. Russian women, Corfus decided, should all be fitted with mudguards.

  A loud crack, like a clap of thunder, sounded from somewhere near the kitchen. Corfus saw the waitress look up and amble slightly faster toward the rear of the hotel. The other patrons hesitated for a moment, then resumed their conversations. In the lobby, the German tourist had handed the camera to his wife and was seated formally in one of the hotel's red upholstered chairs in front of the massive side doors. His sneakers dangled beneath an expanse of exposed white shin. He was shouting orders at her, gesturing angrily as she fiddled with the camera's knobs and buttons. The squat woman was bent over like a snail, peering with great concentration into the viewfinder, when suddenly she straightened up, her face ashen.

  "Was ist los?" the tourist bellowed. But by then the woman's scream had riveted the attention of everyone in the lobby.

  The panic was instantaneous. Behind the German, through the curtained glass double doors, staggered a man covered with blood. Half his shoulder was blown off, and he clutched with agonizing effort at the strands of flesh that remained. Blood spurted out of him like a fountain, splashing into his face in a sickening rhythm. He shielded his eyes from the light with his good hand.

  As the passersby veered around the man with expressions of horror on their faces, two red-uniformed hotel clerks strode over to him. With amazing strength, he knocked one of them sprawling on the carpet, then continued his rabid-dog walk toward the bar, where the occupants shouted their objections and backed away. Corfus half rose, feeling nauseated.

  "Help him," a woman shrieked in a provincial accent. "Why doesn't anyone help him?"

  As one of the hotel clerks tackled the bleeding man from behind and forced him to the floor, Corfus recognized his face. "Oh, my God," he whispered.

  "Just a moment. We've called an ambulance," the clerk shouted. The man flailed beneath him.

  "No!" he screamed. The sound was a cry of betrayal, of agony. His arm shot up and quavered in the air.

  Corfus scrambled down the steps on wobbly legs and forced his way through the melee. "Riesling," he said, "Starcher sent me."

  It seemed so horribly inadequate. But Riesling's eyes brightened at the words. He groaned as he stretched his violently shaking hand toward Corfus.

  "Help me," he said.

  Corfus bent over the wounded man. Riesling moaned, pulling himself close. His blood seeped into Corfus's suit. The flesh from his exploded shoulder hung in strips. With a gasp, he grabbed the useless, blood-drenched hand dangling at his side and stuffed it into his pocket.r />
  He reeked of sweat and fear. The hotel clerk looked to Corfus with shock and disgust. "Sir?" he asked meekly.

  "It's all right. Hurry up that ambulance."

  "In Havana," Riesling sputtered, then was seized with a spasm of pain that shook him the length of his body. "In Havana..." he mumbled and Corfus leaned closer to hear.

  A burst of blinding white light gave Corfus a jolt. The German tourist was assiduously snapping pictures of the two of them, while his wife tugged, sobbing, at his jacket. "Bitte," she wailed. "Bitte, nein..." He pushed her aside and snapped another picture.

  "Get the hell out of here, you vulture!" Corfus shouted at him in English.

  Riesling clutched at him. "No time," he whispered. "Take." He thrust his good hand into his jacket pocket and handed him a blood-soaked bundle of papers. He repeated the action twice more, each time coming up clutching scraps of personal property.

  "Please, wait for the ambulance," Corfus said, but Riesling kept turning over his belongings, one pocket after the other. All the while, he kept talking wildly between ragged gasps, while Corfus struggled to hear him. Riesling forced his way into the pocket that contained his other hand. When he brought it back up, the dead left hand was wound around a metal chain to which was attached a gold disc. He screamed with pain as he untangled the hand, suspended in the air like a puppet's, and the medallion fell to the floor.

  The German's camera flashed again.

  "Take it. Pick it up!" Riesling commanded. Sweat poured into the corners of his mouth. Holding on to the dying man, Corfus stooped to pick up the gold necklace. As he did, Riesling whispered in his ear: “The Grandmaster is alive.”

  Then, inexplicably, he let go of Corfus and kicked him in his side, and Corfus sprawled backward. Before he could regain his footing, hell had opened up and swallowed them all.

  In the double doorway stood two men, both carrying heavy pistols. One of the men, scanning the crowd, wore a white stocking cap, his features blunt and menacing. The other was smaller and bareheaded. He took aim.

  Corfus caught sight of Riesling as the wounded man struggled to his feet, then lurched a few feet away from him toward the other exit. His throat closed in pity. In less than a second, he knew, the man was going to die in front of his eyes.

  The bullet caught the spy square in the back, and Riesling arched convulsively and flipped sideways in midair, his shattered arm flinging outward in a spray of blood.

  The next moments were pure madness. Riesling's hand clawed at the floor. Somehow he was managing, in the extreme of suffering, to move toward a cluster of terrified, shrieking onlookers plastered against the wall. The bareheaded man fired again at Riesling. His body jerked upward and then fell forward with a thump.

  Corfus backed away. His stomach wrenched. The man in the stocking cap was standing in firing position again, impervious to the screams of the people in the lobby.

  And he was aiming directly at Corfus.

  In the next second, a woman, sobbing in panic, lunged in front of Corfus. The bullet took her in the head, exploding it like a melon.

  The brutal act was accentuated by a flash of white light.

  The photographer, scurrying toward the main doors with his prized camera, suddenly fell backward, a gaping hole torn in the right side of his throat.

  It had all happened in a span of seconds. The stampede for the exits began, and Corfus went with the crowd. Outside, a swarm of onlookers had already begun to collect. He didn't see the gunmen leave. He looked back once. All he saw were the splayed bodies of Riesling, the woman with half a head, and the German photographer.

  Starcher said nothing for several minutes. He just sat at his desk, the light from the lamp forming a pool of yellow light over the haphazard items that Corfus had placed there. Slowly Starcher shifted the objects around to form two neat double lines.

  He picked up the three passports in the upper left corner and leafed through them. The American passport was Riesling's. The other two were Finnish and had evidently been stolen or were still in the process of preparation, since the stamped photographs of the subjects were missing. They belonged, ostensibly, to a Rickard and Mirja Trojloi. The other items on the desk were Riesling's Russian working papers and identity card and a manila envelope containing some six thousand rubles and several hundred dollars in American bills.

  He set them down again. "He gave you all of this?" he asked, gesturing to the collection of papers and oddments.

  Corfus nodded. "He emptied his pockets and stuffed everything into my hands."

  Starcher squeezed his eyes shut. His headache was back. "Were you spotted?"

  Corfus snorted. "Damn right. The bastard had a gun pointed dead at me."

  "What happened?"

  Corfus lowered his eyes. "Someone—a woman—got in the way." Starcher looked up at the ceiling. "It got pretty bad, Andy."

  Starcher nodded, expressionless. An incidental murder. Riesling had tried to save Corfus's life by pulling the gunfire away from him. "What did Riesling say? Try to remember the exact words."

  "I don't think he was lucid," Corfus said. "He didn't make a lot of sense."

  "Go ahead."

  "He said something about Havana, first. The sugar crop or something. Really, it didn't seem to mean anything."

  "What did he say exactly?" Starcher pressed.

  "All right, all right. He said, 'In Havana, the sun is hot, but it's good for the sugar crop.' That's what he said. Exactly."

  Starcher sat back. "Havana?" he whispered. Riesling only traveled between Finland and the Soviet Union. What was in Havana?

  "I told you it didn't make sense."

  "Are you sure about Havana?" Starcher said slowly. "Could it have been Hamina? They sound alike."

  "It was Havana," Corfus said stubbornly. "Anyway, they don't grow sugar in Finland."

  Starcher exhaled. "What else? Was that all?"

  "No. He said something else when he gave me the necklace."

  "The necklace?"

  "The guy was cracked, I tell you."

  Starcher rummaged through the items on his desk. "What necklace?" he asked, frowning.

  Corfus poked around the items. "I know he gave it to me," he mumbled. "It was after he dumped the rest of the stuff into my hands. He acted as if it was important. Maybe it's still in my pocket." He rose and walked to the small divan where he had draped his coat and rummaged through the pockets. "Here it is. It must have gotten stuck in the lining."

  He tossed the gold medallion onto the glass desktop with a clatter.

  Starcher stared at it for a moment, unmoving. The gold disc with its ancient coiled snake figurine seemed to glow with a terrible power.

  Corfus looked from the medallion to Starcher. "What—what's the matter?"

  Starcher reached out for the necklace with tentative fingers. He rubbed the gold thoughtfully. It felt warm to his touch.

  So long, so long ago ...

  "What did Riesling say?" Starcher asked, pulling off his bifocals with a grimace. The hand that had touched the medallion trembled.

  "He said the Grandmaster was alive."

  Starcher shot out of his chair. An intense pain coursed down his left arm. "What?"

  "It was the last thing he said," Corfus said, confused. "Are you all right?"

  Starcher groaned and gasped for air. His chest tightened as if a steel band were squeezing his lungs together. The corner of his desk shot up to meet his gaze; his chair toppled with a heavy crash. "The medallion," he said softly. But of course that was ridiculous. Even the Grandmaster's coiled snake didn't possess the power to stop a man's heart. With a sigh, he lost consciousness in a sea of pain.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Alexander Zharkov filled his lungs with the crisp October air mixed with the smell of new bread from the bakery on Neglimmaya Street. To his left, several blocks away, the twenty towers of the Kremlin's fortress walls pricked the sky. Beyond them, the bright-colored gingerbread domes of St. Basil's Cathedral stood in sp
lendid ancient barbarism.

  It was said in the old legends that Ivan the Terrible plucked out the eyes of the cathedral's designers so that its magnificence might never be duplicated. Zharkov's eyes rested for a moment on the structure, as they did each morning. He understood the belligerent, bloody czar of all the Russias, now defiled for his selfish achievements.

  He had understood since his days as a student, when he had first set his unworldly eyes on the great cathedral. While his contemporaries set about ensuring the success of their careers by vocally damning the excesses of the corrupt kings and praising the weekly agricultural output of the Ukraine, Zharkov had been silent, listening, planning. Even then he had understood the price of greatness, and respected it.

  He turned down a side street lined with modest homes, their shutters open. He nodded to an old grandmother, a baba, who swept her steps each morning as Zharkov passed. She smiled toothlessly and watched him walk toward the two-story house that no one on the street spoke of.

  The people in the neighborhood knew that it was not a home. It was not a brothel, because no women came or left there. It was not an office, because no office sounds issued from the small house with the tightly closed windows. Only a crew of workmen in a truck came to the dark little house with regularity, letting themselves in before dawn with dollies loaded with electronic equipment, and then let themselves out within the hour. Those neighbors who guessed that the equipment was for electronic security sweeps of the premises kept the information to themselves. Such knowledge was not welcome in Moscow.

  The house belonged to Nichevo. Sporadically it served as the meeting ground for five or six serious, silent men. Zharkov was the youngest among them. And the most powerful.

  A heavyset man carrying a brown envelope stood at the foot of the steps leading to the front door of the house. They exchanged glances tentatively. Years of secret meetings had inured them both against demonstrative Russian welcomes in full sunlight.