Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  A lightning storm raged over the Caspian’s gray, purple forks mingling with the war zone’s artillery bursts. Although exhausted, his mind buzzed. Conjuring the ghosts of Lopez, Kasparov, Spassky, and Carrera, he stepped through openings, a sixty-four-square grid materializing in his mental ether. A middle-game checkmate . . . only if his opponent was inexperienced, not likely. What gambit? What defense? Queen’s side opening or a king’s side . . .

  He needed another drink.

  “Why did you run out?” Sava asked, stepping in between Uri and the glass.

  Uri shook his head. “Those Carpi barbarians really got to you, didn’t they, Sava?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you know. Did I-and-I do a workup on you before we deployed? If not, they should have,” Uri exhaled a dark plume. “This whole thing is deranged, the twisted notion of a sick mind. “

  “You’ve got me wrong, Uri. I didn’t come up with the idea for this chess match, it was those Nizari lilies. Anyway, it’ll be my ass if you fuck up, right?”

  Uri shook his head. “That’s all I goddamned need, another guilt trip.”

  “Well, the general’s on board with it. Strangely. It’s a go.”

  “Dobish? Someone’s been slipping amobarbital into that guy’s kahve.”

  “Anyway, it’s a way for Alkonost to get out of this shit for cheap,” Sava argued. “So, we lose sixteen men. Back where we started.”

  “And concede to the terms of the ceasefire.”

  “If we lose, I think we have to keep Padshah Khan in his place, sure. The Brothers might make better proxies anyhow. As long as the oil flows, Constantinople will be happy.”

  “Listen, Sava,” Uri said, getting up to look him in the eye. He’d removed his chrome vampire fangs. “I’m sure it’s no secret that I’ve been suspicious of you since Moldova. The fact is, I don’t trust you, and I don’t get why you trust me.”

  “It was me,” Sava declared, unapologetic. “I dumped those drooling cataleptics in the woods. If that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Why?” Uri asked, mouth agape.

  “You know why, Uri.”

  “Revenge?”

  “Partially, but it was more of a warning. I wanted to scare those spooky Carpi fuckers.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped.”

  “It might have, but you didn’t give it a chance,” Sava said, leaning against the window. “Those Neanderthals—all these goddamned barbarians—they only understand one thing . . . fear, instinctual, elemental, and animalistic. And I was going to put that fear into those superstitious bastards, by damn.”

  Uri looked away, unnerved. His mind raced to form an argument, but his brain blanked. He opened his mouth but lacked the words to fill it. Finally, he muttered, “I don’t agree. I think you’re wrong, but—”

  Sava said nothing, eyebrows raised, patiently waiting for Uri to finish his thought.

  “—but I appreciate your honesty.”

  “If you want to send a dispatch to I-and-I and report me, no bother; I don’t mind. I just recommend you do it after the match,” Sava offered, with exaggerated politeness.

  “No. Forget it,” Uri replied.

  Sava’s brazenness was stupefying. He wanted to punch the grinning fool, but couldn’t. Sava’s insanity was infectious.

  “How quickly have you mated an opponent?”

  “I don’t remember. Depends on the player, I guess.”

  “Gentlemen!” General Dobish interrupted, descending the anteroom’s spiral staircase with his contingent of the upper echelon.

  “Sir!” Both shouted, saluting.

  “At ease,” Dobish said, walking up to the men. “Listen, in order to get Padshah Khan to buy into this, I offered up the back rank.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Uri said.

  “We’re going to draw lots from the six battalions; one battalion will have to choose two. Now, as I understand it, rooks, knights, bishops . . . they’re less likely to get popped,” he said, pointing to his temple gun-like. “So . . . ”

  “Sir, I don’t think I can go through with this,” Uri pleaded. “Sava and I . . . We have an understanding, but other Alkonost comrades? It’ll influence the match. I can’t guarantee their lives.”

  “Believe me, lieutenant, it pains me as much as it does you to sacrifice a good merc for something so sideways. But it’s either this, or we lose a few companies fighting those pubescent zealots house-to-house.”

  “Sir, what if we do lose? What’s the contingency plan?” Sava asked.

  “I’m not really sure why you give a shit, Lieutenant Valis. You’ll be greased all over the checkerboard,” General Dobish grimaced. “But to answer the question, I’ve received orders from Command. We’re to cordon off the oil terminal and pipelines to the north of Turkmenbashi as a fallback. Heavy assault is finally rolling onto the beach from Baku. So we’ll be reinforced. The oil must flow. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. We’re in radio communication with The Brothers Farzad and Farzam. The match will be in three days. Until then, gentlemen.” General Dobish saluted.

  Uri and Sava saluted back as Dobish and his entourage left.

  “I best get in some target practice.”

  “What’s the penalty if you miss a shot?” Uri asked. “If you miss a ‘piece’?”

  “I never bothered to ask. I guess we’ll find out,” Sava said, walking away.

  Uri flagged down the manservant and ordered another vodka shot. Sitting down in one of the sofa loungers, he watched the city’s anarchy below him. An image stuck in his mind: hooded Death playing chess with a crusader knight surrounded by a plague’s dance macabre. He rapped his knuckles on the suede armrest trying to remember how he knew it, a film, a painting . . . both?

  It didn’t matter. Humanity’s beliefs lay in the merging of the literal and the figurative. Coincidence, self-fulfilling prophecy . . . it was all the same. Whether a pale horse molded from storm clouds, or a deadly chess match played with living pieces. Signs and symbols were fabrications, constructs of the primitive and fearful human mind. But sometimes reason’s candle flickered, and it scared the hell out of him.

  Padshah Khan insisted his men carry their warlord’s standard. So as not to be outdone, Sava volunteered to carry the Second Brigade’s Flag, Alkonost’s winged maiden on black. Like condemned souls walking through the City of Dis, the seventeen men wound their way through the Awaza District’s narrow streets.

  The Turkmen Hotel lay deep in Nizari territory, and The Brothers were adamant no show of force accompany the players. Sava, the king rifleman, was the only one allowed his Vepr firearm. Shirtless, the men were covered with powdered black coke adhered to their bodies with slippery tar. They flipped a coin, and Uri had won. He preferred black, openings and gambits too full of indecision.

  He played the Khan’s men to prove his skill. Most were beginners and lacked the knowledge of basic openings. Simple mistakes and poor strategy, Uri mated them all in the middle games. General Dobish recommended the matches as a way to calm Padshah Khan, assuring the warlord that he was in Alkonost’s capable hands. So Uri obliged, but was grimly disappointed to not be relieved of his duty.

  Forced to wear samurai-like banners, a flag holster identified each man: knights, bishops, rooks, queen . . . everyone but the pawns. Heads low, the men realized this was a march to a firing line, a death sentence offset by slim chance. Uri avoided looking his comrades in the eyes, the anxious guilt wetting his palms with shame.

  Sava, however, was reveling like a carnival clown. Complete with vampire fangs, he taunted the crowd along the route, hissing and mocking Awaza’s scrawny children and their hijab-shrouded mothers. Adding theater to his harlequin guise, he smeared away the petrol goop from his back to expose his bat-winged tattoo.

  “This isn’t a funeral, lieutenant,” Sava said. “You’re letting them get to you.”

  “You’re goddamned right
it isn’t a funeral, it’s a fucking execution,” Uri said, eyeing Sava’s getup. “And this whole wretched parade . . . it isn’t helping, Sava. Those men here—our comrades—are going to die today. You’re mocking them,” he said, pointing to the men. “And I’m not going to be able to stop it.”

  “You’re going to give it your best, right? They know you will.”

  “Do they?”

  Uri trailed back and let Sava conduct his show. Full of hatred for the barbarians, Sava was eager to slay them. His performance was all part of a death ritual. The Brothers’ followers scattered as he worked his way to the front. Like a demon from medieval lore, the metal fangs and raven flesh taunted their credulous minds.

  The hotel’s two towers dwarfed the shambling, overcrowded slums. The parade passed under Grand Turkmen’s portico, a once grandiose archway. The marbled columns were pocked with strafing and stained from smoke. A tattered banner splashed in Russian Cyrillic script read: Welcome to “The Great Game.”

  Inside the portico, heckles and jeers greeted the seventeen players from the towers’ broken balconies and decks. Like bees on honeycomb, the nomads clung to the buildings’ vertical spaces. In the center was the epic chessboard, empty except for a rounded-back oldster sweeping away the Karakum dust.

  “Good luck,” Sava said, shaking Uri’s hand. “We’ll do a radio check before the clock start, okay?”

  “Got it,” Uri said, tapping his earpiece. “Aim for the head, be merciful.”

  “I always am.” Sava winked.

  Uri limply saluted as the men marched onto the board.

  Each square was five meters, forty-by-forty meters total, the playing surface roughly half a football pitch. For Sava, rifle range would be adequate for precision headshots—Alkonost sniper training mandated one hundred meters minimum—but there was an added challenge.

  Uri watched as the back rank strapped on stilts, treaded aluminum struts like those used for ceiling work. It was a precondition of the game. The Brothers demanded maximum spectacle. A meter above the checkering, “King” Sava towered over the other pieces. The idea of firing a high-powered rifle from wobbly stilts was bizarre, and no one knew the penalty for missed shots.

  A cadre of older Turkmen escorted Uri to the balcony of the hotel’s dilapidated reception. The gallery was retrofitted into box seats, with the player’s table in the center. Decrepit Ottoman furniture lay scattered about. The bleached red velvet divans and settees smelled of mold and dry rot.

  Uri greeted his opponents. The androgynous brothers were dressed as Rajastani Maharajas, their version of full military dress. Uri felt the warped draw of their flamboyant personality cult.

  “We are pleased to make your acquaintance, Alkonost man. May we offer you chai, coffee, cigarettes?”

  “No . . . no thank you,” Uri replied.

  Uri looked around. Past the blocky shapes of The Brothers’ thick-necked strongmen, Uri saw a handful of Padshah Khan’s lieutenants accompanied by Alkonost from mission intelligence. Mach, Sava’s specialist, was setting up a tripod near the balcony, mounting a device that looked like a live-cam or a targeting sensor.

  “Our players will be arriving shortly,” said Farzad or Farzam.

  “Which one of you . . . ?” Uri said, his finger wagging from one to the other.

  “Will be your opponent? My brother Farzad here is extremely competitive . . .

  “ . . . but my win rate is forty-nine point four percent to Farzam’s fifty point six. Sometimes I get too anxious and my passions overwhelm,” he giggled.

  Cheers filled the courtyard as The Brothers’ players marched onto the board. Powdered with white talc, they resembled kabuki actors, complete with red-and-black makeup, a complement to the Naziri nomads’ devotion to their preferred androgyny. The pawns were boys, maybe twelve or thirteen years old; older adolescents filled the back ranks. High on crystal amphetamine, their eyes fluttered, trance-like.

  “Children?” Uri scowled at The Brothers. “We did not agree to this.”

  “They’re not children, Alkonost man, they are fierce mujahideen!”

  Uri shook his head in disgust.

  A loudspeaker announced the start of the game. Facing the reception lobby, two jury-rigged football timers converted into chess clocks, controlled by remote plungers, hung from the tower opposite. At ninety minutes per side, the match would be standard tournament length. Uri struggled to orient himself to the board. The vantage was off. Lacking the convention of a standard chess set, precious time would be consumed plotting moves.

  “Please, sit,” Farzad motioned to black’s gilded armchair. “Let us begin. And remember, when pieces are taken, the king will call the move afterward, not before.”

  “Understood.” Uri tapped his headset mike. “Radio check, Sava, you there?”

  “Roger that.” Sava gave a thumbs-up from across the board.

  Sava and Jaweed aimed their rifles skyward and fired. Farzad’s time started. He whispered his first move into his handheld. Jaweed relayed the move to his man with a shout. Pawn to e4, a conventional kingside opening. Everyone watched as a boy-pawn shuffled two spaces forward into the center. Farzad pushed the clock.

  “All right Sava, let’s respond with pawn to e5.”

  “Roger that.”

  Sava yelled the move to the pawn below. Uri promptly smacked the plunger and started Farzad’s clock ticking. The game developed into a classic four knights opening. The first set of moves was a conservative centuries-old strategy. It built a bulwark in the center, and with the introduction of the “Spanish variation,” the piece development gravitated into its natural flow.

  “They’re playing it safe. Giving me some breathing room.”

  On the fifth move, Farzad castled Jaweed, the Naziri Turkmen shuffling two spaces to his right to fortify behind his pawn wall and rook. Uri responded in kind, forcing Sava to castle and stilt-shuffle to his left. More piece development complicated the center as both sides jockeyed for diagonal control with their bishops.

  “Get on with it, lieutenant. Goddammit. Let’s get this shit going,” Sava radioed, agitated.

  “In a minute.”

  By the fourteenth move, a piece had yet to be taken. Uri noticed a visible shake to the stilted players, the jittery nerves of impending doom. The dimming skies expelled a sand-filled zephyr that eddied and whirled through the courtyard. The piece banners whipped, threatening to topple the smaller players.

  “Get ready, Sava.”

  “Roger.”

  “Pawn takes e4,” Uri radioed.

  The pawn from the opening move, the boy only fifteen meters from Sava, was strung out and oblivious. Raising his rifle to the crook of his shoulder, Sava struggled against the wind. Uri shut his eyes and waited for the report. A few painful seconds later and he heard a gunshot.

  “Got him in the neck. Dead though,” Sava radioed. “It’s about time.”

  Crowd noises swamped Sava’s voice over the microphone. The boy was on his knees, blood-soaked hands grasping his neck, the blood pulsing through his fingers. Once he fell, the clocks stopped and a pair of grim-faced women in chadors shuffled out to haul the corpse away, leaving a coxcomb swath across the checkers.

  “Messy, but a hit nonetheless,” Farzam said, idly loitering behind his brother.

  The clock was restarted, and Farzad made his next move. Cantilevered in a contortionist’s pose, Jaweed aimed his rifle and lifted a stilted leg for balance. The shot spun him a bit, but Uri’s pawn, one of Padshah’s men, quickly dropped.

  “Bishop takes pawn!” he yelled.

  The middle game was unfolding. The next three moves were vicious, with each player reducing their piece count by three. Uri’s knight had gone down, quickly and cleanly, an Alkonost recruit from the Third Rifles Brigade. He didn’t know the man, but it didn’t matter; the anguish and remorse were just as sharp.

  “That fucker owed me money,” Sava quipped.

  “Quiet! Respect, goddammit,” Uri was not amused
.

  After the initial bloodletting, Uri developed his queenside pawn structure; subtle pushes out into the center ranks to fortify the diagonals. After the twenty-third move, with forty-five minutes down on his clock, the king’s file had opened into an alleyway. Like a blitzkrieg, Farzad took Uri’s bishop with his rook a few spaces from Sava. Uri quickly executed the infiltrated piece, the body falling into an awkward slump.

  “Odd sacrifice. What’s he doing?”

  “What’s that?” Sava shouted through the radio static.

  “He’s trying to open up the board. Get ready.”

  “Roger.”

  They jockeyed for position, the remaining rooks pulling kingside to shore their defenses. On the twenty-eighth move, Uri ordered Sava to take a knight on the third rank, almost twenty-five meters away. A bluster whipped Sava’s standards, the flags’ vibration jerking his shoulder and barrel arm. Precious seconds were wasted as Uri waited.

  Vortices of dust danced through the courtyard and across the board. Grit-caked, Sava rubbed the sand from his eyes and squinted into the sight. He squeezed the trigger. The shot went amiss, tagging the Farzas’ knight in the calf. The faltering man exploded in a high-pitch yowl as he reached for his leg.

  “Goddamnit,” Uri hollered. “Finish him!”

  “I’m trying!”

  Another round smacked the man’s shoulder; he was writhing too much to get a bead. The courtyard hushed with his wailing. Frustrated, Sava switched to a three-round burst and put a sloppy end to his misery.

  Uri’s stomach heaved as he dribbled out a bubble of vomit. The showy Brothers snickered and pointed like bully schoolchildren. Uri’s sanity listed amid the atrocity pouring in from breached bulkheads—an abyss . . . a panic. He hit the plunger, stood abruptly, and turned to walk away.

  “Five minutes!” The loudspeaker roared.