In journalism as in life, it helps to be in the right place at the right time, and that the young university graduate certainly was. Among other things, Jon was an FIDE-rated international chess master who had traveled to fourteen countries before his fourteenth birthday, but his first major assignment with INS didn’t require him to pack any more than a lunch. It took place five miles from his front door—at Reykjavik’s Laugardalshöll, where Bobby Fischer took only a month and a half to crush Boris Spassky and break the Soviet Union’s 24-year stranglehold on the world chess championship. I played the game myself (though I wasn’t around for the hijinks of the Fischer-Spassky era, I’d read extensively on the match), and I eagerly soaked up the many entertaining stories he had garnered as a result of working behind the scenes.
But Jon’s experience wasn’t limited to chess. He’d spent his working life covering everything from natural disasters to unnatural wars; from local Icelandic politics to international banking scandals. In the course of his duties, he had, among other things, been shot through the left shoulder in Kosovo, and spent what he told me was the longest week of his life in a Singapore hospital, recovering from a case of dengue fever. In neither case did he miss a deadline or fail to file his story.
From anyone else it would have sounded like braggadocio, but Jon had a knack of rendering himself almost invisible in the retelling of these tales that made them—and him—irresistibly listenable. I told him so.
He shook his head.
“I have been very fortunate,” he said. “That is all.”
I was surprised and pleased to see that Stefansson’s method of keeping a scoresheet was almost identical to the system I’d devised on my own: It was very like what was commonly used in basketball, using a diagram of the court and writing down the player’s number at the spot from which she attempted a shot. If the shot resulted in a goal, you circled the number. The exercise was in reality an unnecessary one, because the tournament organizers provided us with complete game statistics (including shot charts) within minutes of the final buzzer, but I liked doing it, and it helped to keep me involved in the game.
We saw Lori and Karin Fessler in action twice more before the off day. All five of the officiating crews seemed to me to be uniformly competent and efficient, but Lori and Karin looked effortless. They could almost have done it blindfolded, I felt. (Back in my umpiring days, I’d had players and managers accuse me of doing exactly that.)
The other thing that got my attention was that occasionally, Stefansson would make what looked to me like a stray mark on his scoresheet. The third or fourth time he did it, I asked him what it meant.
He smiled.
“Oh, just a private system I’ve invented. You will probably divine the method in due course.”
Everybody loves a mystery—I, more that most—and I tried to figure it out, but I couldn’t find the common denominator. When the last game of the third session ended and we’d packed up the tools of our trade, I asked him about it again.
Again, he smiled.
“You will see in time, Paul. I don’t wish to be mysterious, but for reasons of my own, I would prefer that you arrive at your conclusions independently of my, ah, prompting.”
“Well, that’s certainly un-mysterious enough,” I said, laughing, “Whatever you say—but see if I share any secrets with you from now on.”
Jon adjusted his tie an unnecessary millimeter, then snapped his briefcase shut and stood up.
“Do this much at least,” he said. “Give it some thought during the free day tomorrow. If you are unable to break the code by Monday, I will share it with you.”
“That’s a deal,” I said. I lifted my bottle of Narzan (I was becoming addicted to the stuff) to him. “See you then.”
“Good night, Paul.”
I thought about it on the way home, but I didn’t get anywhere. Had they been plays or goals that were especially outstanding, the way you might put a star on your scorecard next to a great play in a baseball game? Some had been, but others seemed quite ordinary. On at least one occasion, Jon had made his notation after a simple seven-meter throw—a penalty shot.
When I got back to the hotel, I tried again to figure it out, with the help of my balcony view, a cigar, and a bottle of Baltika-3. Again, I got nowhere.
My degree was in journalism, but I also had a strong background in math, one that included a great many statistics courses. My current trouble, I decided, was that I didn’t have a large enough data set to reach any significant conclusions. Over the eight games I’d watched with Jon, I’d only seen him do his thing maybe twelve or fourteen times, and so far as I could recall, it wasn’t focused on any particular team or player.
The hell with it. It wasn’t worth staying up all night for. Or all of what passed for night around here, anyway. My watch read a quarter past one in the morning, but there was still enough light on my balcony to read by; and below me, Nevsky Prospekt was filled with revelers. This White Nights stuff couldn’t be good for people’s sleep habits—especially not for the poor slobs who lived and worked here all year round.
But I was too tired to care. I went inside and tossed my beer bottle into the trash can. Then I undressed, sat on the bed, and turned my mind to my interview with Lori tomorrow—or, should I say, later this morning.
That was a happier prospect altogether.
Chapter Eleven
Elsewhere
Three Crowns Hotel
St. Petersburg, Russia
The woman jiggled her key card in the lock, but nothing happened. She took it out, examined it, wiped it on her blouse, reinserted it. Again she was unsuccessful; again she took it out and looked at it.
“Du Stückscheisse,” she muttered. (Whereas most English swearing is sexually based, Germans lean more upon the scatological.) She looked around her. Not only was the key a piece of shit, the entire hotel was a piece of shit, sixty years old if it was a day, a shining example of Communist architecture. Even the toilets barely worked. She wondered if there was an alternative to walking—she was tired, and the elevators were shut off after 22:00—down four flights to the front desk to get a replacement key. There wasn’t. She turned and moved toward the stairwell at the far end of the hall.
As she got to the end of the hall, something occurred to her. Again she swore under her breath, but then she smiled, turned, and walked back.
She walked past the door she had just tried, and put the card in the slot of the next door along. The green light came on, and she went into the cool, dark room. She reached for the light switch and flipped it on—the snick was loud and definite—but the room remained adamantly black.
Of course, she thought, but it was no matter. She undressed in the dark, reaching for and donning a short white nightgown that in any light would have shown her lithe figure to good advantage.
The woman took one step toward her bed, and a second. Then she stopped, suddenly worried.
But she never had a chance to wonder why. Something crashed into the side of her face with almost inhuman force. She heard and felt her jaw shattering, and the inside of her head exploded in a brilliant flash of light. The sheer weight of the blow knocked her back onto the bed, shocked and somehow still barely conscious, but utterly unable to move. Dislodged teeth and splintered bone filled the bottom of her mouth, but she was unable to spit them out. She wanted to scream, but her brain wouldn’t let her. Even if it had, her broken jaw would have made any sound almost impossible.
There was a small gap in the heavy window curtains, and a sliver of the evening sun got through. It was enough to allow her to see a large form looming over her. Then the form—she dimly realized from somewhere that it was a man—came down on top of her. One of his legs went between her own, and she felt his knee forcing itself against her pelvis. She squirmed, but there was nowhere to go. The man raised his right arm, and she saw a metallic gleam. Then his hand moved downward with lightning speed and the huge knife slashed cruelly across her throat.
&nb
sp; Defenseless, she convulsed on the bed. The knife plunged deep into her chest. Then once again, into her stomach. Then her right thigh. And again, and yet again—every time with a different destination.
After the first strike of the knife, the woman felt no actual pain; merely the weight of the blows themselves. She saw the blood spurting from the wound in her throat as though from a geyser; saw her arms and legs thrashing to no good effect or purpose. Above her, she saw the man as he continued to assault her, even though she was powerless to do anything to protect herself.
How odd, she thought. How very odd that it doesn’t hurt any more.
And then there was nothing.
When he finished, the man stayed on top of her for a few seconds; long enough to make sure the first part of the job was complete. It could scarcely have been otherwise, but he prided himself on his professionalism—and, he admitted to himself, there was something sexual about the beautiful, bloody, half-naked corpse that lay sprawled beneath him. He owed himself this tiny bit of pleasure, at least. He would have done more with her, had time and the dictates of good sense permitted.
But there was always the next time. Something to look forward to.
He stood up and walked over to the table in the corner of the room. To the ordinary onlooker (had there somehow been such), the knife he took from his brown travel bag wouldn’t have seemed sufficient for Part Two.
Nor would it have been…unless one knew what he was doing. Part Two took less than thirty seconds, start to finish. That accomplished, he carefully stepped out of the black hazardous materials suit and took off the hood, dropping everything to the floor in the corner and leaving it where it fell. He wouldn’t need it any more. Let the authorities make of it what they would. The man’s suit and tie underneath were pristinely clean, though his shirt was soaked in sweat. He took a few deep breaths. The stench in the room was oppressive, but not unfamiliar to him.
Now it was simply a matter of picking up the brown bag and casually walking out. There were no security cameras in this part of the Three Crowns Hotel.
The bag didn’t weigh as much as one might think.
Especially not if one was used to it.
Cramer Press Syndicate
Southampton, New York
“Let me make sure I have this straight,” Bentley Cramer said. “The two of you are possessed of the notion that Paul Mallory is in some sort of—what was the word you used—trouble?”
Maria and Felicity nodded.
“But you have no factual evidence to substantiate this?”
This time they didn’t nod. This was another of Cramer’s little games. By peppering them with a series of short yes-or-no questions, he could, if they let him, turn these two smart and capable women into nothing more than a couple of very pretty bobblehead dolls. Felicity and Maria had seen it before, though, and refused to rise to the bait.
Cramer watched them for a few seconds. When the girls didn’t reply, he went on.
“And you are unable to specify the precise nature of this…trouble. Correct?”
Nothing.
“You have, in fact, initiated these alarums and excursions based on nothing more than your women’s intuition?” He spun the last two words viciously, almost sneering at his secretaries, but yet again, they let the ball go by unplayed.
Cramer switched tactics then, turning the full force of his personality on Maria in an attempt to divide and conquer.
“Or perhaps just one woman’s intuition. The intuition, I suppose, of a woman whose tenuous-at-best connection with a nonexistent supernatural is a distant and dubious genetic link to a tribe of fortune-telling Hungarian charlatans?”
Maria’s eyes didn’t even flicker. Cramer pressed on.
“Well? Have you lost the power of speech as well as the power of reason? Let us return to the beginning, then, and, for the sake of argument, accept your ridiculous premise at face value. What do you suggest I do about it?”
“We thought—” Felicity began.
Cramer went apoplectic—or appeared to. Had the faces on Mount Rushmore been present in the room, they would have been more expressive than the girls’.
“Thought?” he exploded. “Don’t flatter yourselves. You didn’t think. I am beginning to have doubts as to whether the two of you are even capable of the process. When I think of whom I might have hired…but we will leave that discussion for another day. If you had thought—even briefly—you would have seen the flaws for yourselves. I will not lift one finger to help Mallory. Since you have ruined my morning already, I may as well take the time to educate you as to why I will not raise a finger.”
Then Cramer raised a finger.
“One. In the real world, there is no such thing as trouble. Only children get in trouble. Mallory is not a child. Therefore, Mallory is not in trouble.
“Two. Not only does he not need my help, he doesn’t want it. He is a lone wolf who desires nothing more than to be left alone to do a job of work; to be accountable only to himself and his employer. Only thus will he perform at his best. He has little taste for teamwork, and none at all for command. To put it in language that even you two may understand, Paul Mallory does not work and play well with others.
“Three. Mallory is expendable. He knows this. He understands that there may on occasion be risks attached to his duty on the special assignment desk, and he accepts them. To discuss that with him would be both unnecessary and insulting. The man is no fool.
“Four. Do I look like Mary Poppins to you? I am not running a nanny service, and I am certainly not in the business of easing the unwarranted concerns of addle-minded young women such as yourselves. I can’t afford to be. I am not made of money—”
Maria coughed. Cramer’s eyes bored into her. Felicity bit her lip and studied the clock on the far wall intently, in the manner of one who was learning to tell time from scratch. Five long seconds passed.
“Are you ill, Ms. Rakosi?” Cramer asked.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cramer,’ Maria said. “I think I must have taken in some of your cigar smoke by accident.”
“Don’t do it again. Ms. Carter, does that clock hold some strange and compelling fascination for you? Has time stood still for you? Or begun to run backwards? Are the numerals on the face out of their customary order? Perhaps you are merely fascinated by the movement of the second hand? No? None of the above? Good. Excellent.”
Cramer stopped to take a breath. Inserted the cigar, drew deeply, removed it, examined it, stared at his secretaries, swiveled his chair, blew smoke ostentatiously out to the right, then swung back to face Felicity and Maria.
“Five,” he said. “If Mallory has somehow found himself in difficulty, it is almost certainly of his own making. Let him extricate himself if he can. Or not.”
He stood up. “That is my decision. Now, I have a great deal of work to do. If you ladies will excuse me.” He turned and opened the door of his humidor.
The two secretaries got out of there. They walked down the hall to a small kitchen at the back. Maria poured two cups of coffee and handed one to her friend.
“That was fun,” she said.
“Gives one an appreciation for how Daniel must have felt walking into the lions’ den,” Felicity agreed. “But he’s right, of course.”
“That’s what makes him so annoying.”
Maria’s earpiece buzzed. She removed the device, holding it in her hand so that both of them could hear, and pressed the button.
“Inside. Both of you.” Click.
The word “immediately” had not been necessary. The women emptied their coffee into the sink and tossed their cups into the trash can.
“Act One, Scene Two,” Felicity said. “I wonder if we’ll have speaking parts this time.”
“I doubt it. Probably he just wants a chance to insult your ancestors for a change.”
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Felicity gestured toward the door. “You first.”
Maria grinned at her. “I love you too
.”
They walked down the hall side by side. Cramer’s door opened, and he stepped out to meet them.
“If you want so badly to be members of the Paul Mallory Babysitters Club,” he boomed, “here’s your chance. There’s a Gulfstream waiting at JFK. Which one of you meddling females is it waiting for?”
Chapter Twelve
My musings about Lori were pleasant enough, but they weren’t the kind to keep me up all night. They didn’t amount to any more than the sort of automatic fantasy any man might briefly have when he spotted an attractive woman; to raise them even to the level of velleity was to overstate the case. Besides, she was a possible news source, and we journalists had rules about that sort of thing.
Still, as I said, it was pleasant to consider. I liked her.
I’ve always been an early riser, no matter what I’ve been up to the night before. The travel alarm beeped at 6:55, and my wake-up call came five minutes later. My interview with Lori was set for ten at her hotel across town, and my stomach churned with all the nerves and anticipation of the first day of school—or of a first date.
I showered and shaved, then slipped into my complimentary bathrobe and ordered bacon, scrambled eggs, orange juice, a vat of coffee, and the International Herald Tribune from room service. (I was still pretending to be clever by keeping my Russian knowledge under wraps.) After breakfast, I poured a second cup of coffee and took it out to the terrace to enjoy my view of Arts Square.
To coin a phrase, that view was utterly magnificent. I remembered what the guidebook had had to say about it. Designed in the early nineteenth century by architect Carlo Rossi, the square was home to, among other things, the Mussorgsky Ballet Theatre, the St. Petersburg Philharmonia’s Bolshoi Zal (Large Hall), and the Mikhailovsky Palace, which these days housed the Russian Museum.
Nearby was the beautifully-spired and ominously-named Khram Spasa na Krovi (“Our Savior on Spilled Blood”) cathedral. The blood thus referenced was that of Tsar Aleksandr II, who was assassinated on that very spot in 1881. Construction on the church began two years later, on the orders of his son, Aleksandr III, and took twenty-four years to complete. Though most of St. Petersburg’s architecture is Baroque and Neoclassical, the church was deliberately designed in a style reminiscent of the celebrated and much older St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. Looking at it, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the place ran a million rubles over budget. Just incredible.
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