Grandmaster (A Suspense and Espionage Thriller) Read online

  "Comrade," Zharkov said, with the briefest nod toward the brown envelope. He unlocked the front door. It closed behind them with a double click. Zharkov led the heavyset man through the front parlor and into a small office containing little more than a desk, a few uncomfortable wooden chairs, and a wall of new metal file cabinets on which rested incongruously an ornate chessboard inlaid with ebony and ivory.

  "You are well, Sergei?" Zharkov said with more warmth once they were away from the inquisitive eyes of the people on the street.

  "Well enough. My son wishes to change his course of study at the university. He wants to take up art," the man with the envelope said with a shrug.

  Zharkov smiled at the man's obvious discomfort. General Sergei Ostrakov was KGB in the style of Stalin: a trained bear of a man who obeyed blindly, killed easily, lived automatically, and spared little thought for the inconsequentials of life, which included every activity not directly linked to his personal survival. "Art is a worthwhile study," Zharkov said.

  "Not for the son of a fighting man. Disgraceful. You are lucky not to be fettered with the burden of a family, Alyosha." He used the friendly Russian diminutive for Alexander, but the name seemed to come from his mouth only with effort.

  "Your coat?" Zharkov said.

  The KGB man shook his head. "No. I'll just stay a minute." He tossed the envelope onto Zharkov's desk. "There's something in there that might interest you."

  He was fishing for something, Zharkov knew, and he refused to rise to the bait. He sat on the soft leather chair behind his desk and slowly lit a cigarette. The envelope remained untouched on the desk.

  After a few seconds of awkward silence, Ostrakov spoke again. "This is something in your field of interest," he said. "Kutsenko is attempting to defect to the Americans. He met with an agent last night."

  "Which agent?" Zharkov asked mildly, his hooded eyes still looking down at his cigarette.

  "We think it was Frank Riesling. He divested himself of any identification before he died, but our researchers made him from some photographs." He thrust his chin toward the brown envelope. "He worked out of Helsinki, taking defectors out through the northern route."

  "And what happened?" Zharkov asked.

  "Nothing," Ostrakov said. "It's in the envelope."

  Zharkov leaned forward and pulled a sheaf of photographs from the envelope. The first was of a fat woman posing for her portrait in front of a mural. The second showed another woman, arms outstretched, falling as her face exploded into fragments.

  "Some of these are inconsequential," Ostrakov said offhandedly. He gestured to the photo of the woman in her moment of death. "An accident," he said.

  Angrily, Zharkov slammed the photos down on his desk without looking at the rest.

  "What happened to Riesling?"

  "He's dead."

  "Your men killed him?"

  "Yes."

  "And Kutsenko?"

  "He is being watched. I've had him watched for two weeks now," Ostrakov said. "Ever since I learned he was planning to defect. I had his wife fired from her job at the hospital," he said proudly.

  "You idiot," Zharkov snapped.

  Ostrakov bristled, but Zharkov ignored him and began to look again through the rest of the photos. He blew out a lungful of smoke in disgust. Nichevo had given him a certain power over the KGB, but it would never be enough power to change the mentality of its people. The KGB was cluttered with heavy-handed fools.

  "That's the agent," Ostrakov said. The third photograph showed a man reeling to the floor in agony, his shoulder blown away. In the foreground were several shadows hovering around neatly upholstered furniture.

  "Where were these taken?" Zharkov asked incredulously.

  "At the Samarkand Hotel, around eight o'clock yesterday evening. There was a man taking pictures of the incident, an East German tourist."

  "A tourist?" Zharkov shouted, throwing the photographs down onto the desk. "You had a man shot to death in the lobby of a busy hotel during peak hours"—he slammed his fist down on the picture of the dying woman— "killing God knows how many innocent bystanders..."

  "Only two bystanders, comrade," Ostrakov said coldly. "The German tourist was taking incriminating photographs, as you can see. It was unavoidable." He stepped back a pace, his friendly intimacy replaced by the official persona of his rank. "Colonel Zharkov, I wish to remind you that Nichevo's function does not extend to dictating what the KGB will do."

  "You do not have to remind me. Every bungled performance by your organization reminds me." With a snap, he picked up the photographs again.

  "I am trying to remember that you are my friend, Comrade Colonel," Ostrakov said angrily. He rambled on, but Zharkov didn't hear him. He was transfixed by the last photograph in the series. It showed Riesling, screaming in pain before the bewildered, terrified face of a dark young man, as a shiny metal object glittered in the air on its way to the floor. The carved surface of the object was facing the camera.

  Zharkov held his breath as he pulled a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and held it over the black-and-white photograph. Under the lens, the object leaped into prominence.

  It was a medallion bearing the figure of a coiled snake in a circle.

  Zharkov closed his eyes. He felt dizzy. The Grandmaster had surfaced.

  "It is the same, isn't it?" Ostrakov asked.

  Zharkov looked up, his eyes alert and suspicious. "I don't know what you mean," he said.

  The KGB man spread his arms. "Alyosha," he said in a strained attempt at friendliness. "We have spent many years together. We have marched in the snows of the Caucasus, killed together in the jungles. We have bathed together and shared women. I know the mark you keep beneath your collar."

  Zharkov swallowed, trying to focus on the fat man who seemed to sway in front of him. "Why have you come?" he asked quietly.

  "The medallion. We wish to know its significance. Before he died, Riesling passed everything in his possession to the man in the photograph. We've identified him as Michael Corfus. He's a liaison officer at the American embassy, but he's Starcher's deputy in the CIA."

  "I know who he is," Zharkov said. "You've captured him, too?"

  Ostrakov shrugged. "No. With his diplomatic immunity, he could only be expatriated anyway. We're keeping an eye on him."

  "In your usual subtle fashion, no doubt," Zharkov said. He stubbed out the cigarette. He allowed himself only a handful every day and never one before lunch. This idiot and the other fools at the KGB had stuck their blundering fat hands into a sensitive Nichevo operation, and it was Zharkov’s own fault. He should have taken greater care to keep the KGB out.

  The facts were clear. Riesling had passed the medallion to Corfus. He should never have been allowed to leave the premises, but the KGB decided not to capture him at all. Why should they? They were probably still busy celebrating their successful terrorizing of a hotel full of foreign visitors. Two bystanders dead. Riesling killed. Kutsenko alerted.

  All a waste.

  And worst of all, the medallion was gone.

  He looked up and met Ostrakov's eyes. They were the eyes of a beast of burden, trained to see only what they expected, blind to truth. No, Zharkov would not tell the KGB anything.

  "The medallion," Ostrakov prompted.

  Zharkov dismissed it with a flick of his hand. "Meaningless," he said. He stood up and extracted from a file cabinet a plain green folder. "The green signifies a closed case," he said, slapping the folder into Ostrakov's open hands. Inside were medical reports, a detailed account of the circumstances of death, and a grainy photograph of a dark-haired man lying in a shallow open grave. The face in the photograph, smeared with dirt and lacerated with small cuts, looked vital even in death. The clothes he wore were rough, handmade garments of the style worn by the goral of the Polish highlands. Around his neck was a medallion that bore the image of a coiled snake.

  "Who was he? He's wearing the same medallion."

  Zharkov answered in
a monotone. "The one last night was probably a copy. His name was Justin Gilead. He was a chess player, and the CIA ran him around the world. He was killed in an avalanche in Poland four years ago. I was there at the time."

  Ostrakov grunted, tossing down the green folder. "The Americans know about this?"

  Zharkov nodded. "I saw that they got copies of the file."

  "And your neck, Comrade?" Ostrakov asked bluntly.

  Zharkov's hooded eyes flashed. "It is an old scar. It means nothing. Not to me and not to you and not to your superiors. Understand?"

  The KGB man sputtered in front of Zharkov's vehemence. "I thought the medal might contain some kind of secret message," he said.

  "You should have asked Riesling before your thugs pulled the trigger," Zharkov said dryly. "Where is Kutsenko now?"

  "My men have him under surveillance," Ostrakov said.

  "I want him left alone," Zharkov said.

  Ostrakov's face clouded. "But that's impossible. He is the world chess champion, and he is planning to defect. Impossible. My superiors—"

  "And I want his wife to be given her job back. She should be made to believe it was all a mistake."

  "I will never be permitted to—"

  "I will take full authority for this," Zharkov said. "I'll send a report to the directorate today. They'll understand. Kutsenko is very vital to plans that Nichevo is working on."

  "What plans?"

  "You know better than to ask that," Zharkov said curtly.

  He led Ostrakov through the front parlor and to the door. "If you don't believe me, wait for instructions from your superiors. That is the Russian way, I suppose."

  "Zharkov, I've told you—"

  "Just try not to kill Kutsenko in the meantime. Or this Corfus. I think I will need him as well."

  "You are insulting, Alexander Vassilovitch," Ostrakov said, his face red. "There is a new premier. I do not think Nichevo will continue to ride roughshod much longer."

  "Until that happens, good day, Comrade," Zharkov said without expression.

  Settling down to write his request to Ostrakov's superiors, his hands passed over the green folder. Inside lay the photograph of the dead Justin Gilead. Zharkov took it out and studied it again. In repose, Gilead's face was almost that of a boy, and it was as a boy that Zharkov best remembered him, hunched over a chessboard in a banquet room of the Hotel de Crillon in Paris.

  It had been a match between children, a meeting of two lonely, gifted ten-year-old boys who had drawn themselves into the magic of a strange game where kingdoms were lost and won in the turn of a thought. Alexander Zharkov had played against Justin Gilead then, in the sight of chess masters from all over Europe and the Soviet Union.

  Young Alyosha had burned with shame when his father strapped a radio receiver to his forearm before the match. He explained that the American boy, Gilead, was probably the finest child chess player in the world and that Zharkov could not leave the game to chance.

  "I play well, too, father," Alyosha had protested, but the receiver remained.

  During the match, the Russian grandmasters conferred on each of Alyosha's moves. His instructions were broadcast to him through minute electric shocks on the flesh of the Russian boy's arm. The first set of signals named the piece to move; the second told him which square to occupy. He clenched his teeth to hold back his tears during the sham match. He wanted to play Gilead alone, to match his mind to his opponent's. As it was, Alyosha was little more than a robot mechanically moving pieces on a board. He looked across at the young American with the raven black hair, grateful that Gilead's head was always down, over the board, studying the pieces and the positions.

  Alyosha read the signal on his forearm and made another move. For the first time, Justin Gilead looked up, revealing a pair of eyes of the most extraordinary electric blue Zharkov had ever seen. They were old eyes, wise and pained, locked strangely into a child's face and body. Gilead moved a knight and said softly, "Check. Mate in five."

  Stunned, Alyosha turned and looked across the room to where the delegation of Russian chess masters were following the moves on a portable chessboard. His father's face was flushed with anger. Alyosha knew there would be no more instructions, no more radio signals.

  He resigned. As the two boys stood up to shake hands, Gilead whispered, "Do you speak English?"

  "A little," Alyosha said numbly.

  "I hope someday I can play against you, and not those men back there." He nodded toward the rear of the room.

  "Oh..." Alyosha wanted to die of shame.

  "Your sleeve," Gilead said.

  Zharkov looked at his shirt cuff, where a small wire looped close to the fabric. "You knew."

  "It's all right," Gilead said. "Another day. Another place. We will play a real game."

  After the match, Justin was surrounded by press photographers and reporters, eager for a story on the young chess genius. He never mentioned Alyosha's radio receiver.

  There had not been a rematch. Zharkov was permitted to continue his chess career until he began his military service. He followed his father to Nichevo meetings, said nothing, and listened. Justin Gilead disappeared off the face of the earth that very week.

  Zharkov saw Gilead only twice during the twenty-five years that followed.

  On both occasions, Zharkov had killed him. On both occasions, the Grandmaster had returned.

  The second time had been four years ago in Poland. Gilead had survived and escaped, but then had vanished once again. The Americans did not know where he was, in fact believed him dead, and even Zharkov's far-flung network of spies had not been able to find a trace of him. The Russian eventually had come to believe that Justin Gilead had died of his wounds.

  Died. The way a human being would have.

  And now the medallion had surfaced, and while Ostrakov did not know what it meant, Alexander Zharkov did. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise in the morning. He had feared it for years.

  Justin Gilead—the Grandmaster—was alive.

  Unconsciously, Zharkov's hands lifted to the high Russian military collar he wore.

  Justin Gilead. The hunter. The hunted. Their destinies were as entwined as their pasts, and Zharkov knew he could never leave Gilead's death to others. That task, he knew, had been assigned to him and him alone since the moment of his birth.

  He tore open the collar. Beneath it, burned into his flesh and scarred into ugly permanence, was the mark of the coiled snake.

  BOOK TWO

  THE WEARER OF THE BLUE HAT

  CHAPTER SIX

  Justin Gilead learned early about death. His mother, a stage actress of remarkable beauty, died before Justin was three years old. His father, a novelist known worldwide by the single name Leviathan, which graced a stream of flashy if embarrassingly illiterate bestsellers, decided during his wife's funeral that the care of a preschool infant would hinder mightily the extensive research in the bars and bordellos of Europe necessary to produce his masterpieces.

  As a result, Justin was raised in different cities around the United States by a succession of faceless aunts and uncles and chance associates of his father's who welcomed Leviathan's fat checks in return for sheltering and feeding a small boy who spoke little, had few friends, and amused himself by playing solitary games of chess during the lonely evenings of his childhood. One uncle encouraged him, and soon Justin was playing in, and winning, tournaments. When he was nine, he finished second in the United States junior chess championships.

  Donald Gilead learned of his son's ability at the chessboard only when the invitation for Justin to participate in the French tournament reached him while he was in Paris arguing with a whore over the price of an evening. Thinking of the good publicity the boy's victory could generate for Leviathan's book, the elder Gilead had Justin flown over alone like so much baggage.

  After Justin's triumphant match with the young Russian prodigy, the boy accompanied his father into the dim bars and illegal gambling houses
in the seedy side streets of Courbevoie, where Donald Gilead found comfort. They did not speak much to each other. Gilead had all but forgotten the presence of the quiet boy. Justin, too, kept to his own thoughts. They were of robes.

  Yellow robes. The back of the chess hall had been full of small, dark men in yellow robes, watching, concentrating. But their focus was not on the game. He, Justin Gilead, had been the object of their attention. He could feel them; their thoughts were almost palpable to him. And in words that were not words, the men in the yellow robes had said, Come. You are of us. The man is not your father. This is not your home. We have come to take you home.

  At first he had found the intense stares of the small men to be distracting, but whatever energy—that was the only word he could think of for their strange communication through distance, their language without words—they sent to him shortly had the reverse effect. It concentrated his vision. It tightened his ranging mind until there was nothing for him to see or question or understand except the chess pieces in front of him, the knights and bishops and pawns that moved to his direction. For the length of that extraordinary match with the Russian boy who had not been permitted to control his own pieces, Justin Gilead did not merely play the game. He was the game.

  He wished he could talk to someone about the group of men in their yellow robes and the unearthly feeling of power they had sent to him during the match. Slowly he looked around the bar. His father, shirt unbuttoned down to the belly, was fondling the breasts of a dirty-looking blond woman to the encouragement of other bleary-eyed patrons.

  No, there was no one who would understand about the men in the yellow robes. Justin looked the other way and tried to stay awake. At the far end of the bar, a dark man with a sharp nose and thinning hair sat silently, watching Justin's father and the blond woman.

  His father shouted something, and the woman shouted back, spewing out a stream of gutter French. Justin turned in time to see his father reel back drunkenly, then smash his fist into the woman's face. She screamed. A small explosion of blood sprayed from her nose.