Grandmaster

by Molly Cochran

  As soon as Saarinen walked through the doorway, Riesling rose automatically, and his hand darted toward the pistol inside the plastic pouch. When he saw it was the captain, he peered past him toward the small companionway behind.

  "Sit down, sit down," Saarinen said with annoyance. "There's some trouble, but nothing to do with the business back on the wharf." He lit a blackened candle lamp on the table. The light cast huge shadows on the grease-spattered wall.

  "What, then?" Riesling asked coldly.

  Saarinen gestured to Riesling's empty chair with his chin and pulled a cracked mug from behind the sink. "You," the captain said, his dark eyes now twinkling like a satyr's. "I have brought you on this run for many months, yes? I do not even know your name, and yet I know you like a brother. And like a brother, I worry for you. Always nervous, always expecting the worst. That is your way, but you will drive yourself to sickness, my friend." He splashed some vodka into the mug and took a swig from the bottle himself.

  "You agreed to take me to Hamina," Riesling said stubbornly.

  Saarinen sighed. "Hamina, yes. But I do not think my men can take you to Vyborg."

  Riesling reached into his coat and produced a thick envelope filled with currency. He slid it along the tabletop toward Saarinen. Wordlessly the captain hefted the envelope and stuffed it into his pocket. "Enough for Hamina," he said.

  "What trouble?" Riesling asked quietly.

  Saarinen poured a long draft into his mouth and exhaled noisily. "The Russians have doubled up on their Finnish border patrols," he said. "Your friend in Vyborg has been removed."

  "The old man at the guard station?"

  Saarinen nodded. "Shot."

  "What about you?"

  "The ship's running empty," Saarinen said. The Kronen had made a tidy fortune for Saarinen by illegally transporting food and small machinery to Russia and its satellite states. His three crewmen, all experienced smugglers, carried the goods into Soviet bloc countries and sold them at highly inflated prices on the black market. Only one of his band, Saarinen claimed, had ever been stopped by the authorities, and that man had been killed on the spot, leaving Saarinen's lucrative business to thrive undetected.

  Riesling, like Saarinen, entered and left the Soviet Union frequently for illicit purposes, but the goods he smuggled were people. Scientists, scholars, the occasional military defector—people who would never be permitted to leave Russia alive—had been guided by Riesling to the West. It was this mutuality of purpose that had brought the American agent and the Finnish criminal sailor together in a symbiotic no-questions-asked relationship that had lasted for the better part of two years.

  "Is Vyborg the only place with reinforcements?" Riesling asked, trying to hold down a rising panic.

  "Everywhere. All the border entries except in the far north. And that's useless. It has already been snowing heavily for weeks everywhere north of Kuhmo."

  Riesling swallowed. "Why?"

  The captain shrugged his meaty shoulders. "There's a new premier in Russia, and I expect the KGB is trying to make an impression so he doesn't fry their asses." He shrugged again. "It'll wear off before long."

  "Christ," Riesling said under his breath.

  "Even the run to Hamina is a danger now. Gogland is crawling with secret police. You'll see when we pass."

  Riesling rose and went to the small porthole on the starboard side of the cabin. Gogland Island, a Russian outpost square in the middle of the Gulf of Finland, was not yet visible in the foggy dawn light.

  "They won't stop us," Saarinen explained reassuringly, cutting a thick slice off the sausage with his pocketknife. "The Kronen is a fishing vessel registered in Helsinki. We are permitted in these waters." He stuffed the meat into his mouth and chewed noisily. "If not for you, there would be nothing extraordinary about this trip at all. We would have passed Gogland in any case."

  He washed the meat down with a long drink of the Koskenkorva. "But Hamina is too far for an ordinary fishing boat from Helsinki. This time, we will blame the sea for taking us so far off course or the drunkenness of the captain," he said with a laugh. "But we will not make this trip again. Not until the Russians have decided once again that losing a few of their countrymen to the West is not worth the effort at the borders, eh?"

  Riesling looked at him sharply. How much did the man know?

  "Take it easy," Saarinen said. "I would have to be blind not to notice that the passengers with you on the return route were all Russians. The boots, the clothing. Even their breath is Russian. Don't insult my intelligence."

  He took another drink and wiped the spillings from his chin on his sleeve. "Anyway, I don't care. I have not led a blameless life myself. But the difference between us, my friend, is that I have no government behind me, as you do."

  He waved away Riesling's objections before they could begin. "I do not believe that you are transporting Russians out of Russia for your own enjoyment. So if the KGB catches you, they question you, a little torture, perhaps ..." He shrugged expressively. "In the end, they trade you for one of their own spies. Not so bad, eh? But if they catch Saarinen, he hangs. So peace, yes?" He held up the bottle in salute.

  Riesling drank thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving the Finn. Saarinen smiled. "Well, we're only young once. My men will take you as near to Vyborg as possible—in Finland, that is."

  Well, at least that was something, Riesling thought.

  But not much. It meant he was apparently going to be deposited near a heavily guarded Russian border station and left to his own devices for getting into the Soviet Union and out again with the premier Russian chess champion and his wife.

  "Unless you want us to turn around and go back," Saarinen said, as if reading the American's mind. "As far as the dock authorities are concerned, the Kronen has been at sea since yesterday. You won't be linked with that unfortunate policeman." He paused. "You didn't have to kill him, you know."

  "Yes, I did," Riesling said flatly. "He saw the name of your docked boat, which has supposedly been out to sea since yesterday, and he was radioing his headquarters. A word from him and you might have trouble ... I might have trouble."

  "If you say so," Saarinen said, but Riesling was not listening. Why the hell hadn't he been warned about the border buildup? Were they going to wait until he got caught? The CIA had its head up its ass again. Maybe he should wait. Let that damned chess-playing Kutsenko get out of Russia later, some other way.

  No. He couldn't abort now. Kutsenko wasn't just a chess player; he was the champion of the world. His defection would make the Russians crazy. No. Riesling would go into Moscow and from there, play it by ear.

  If he could get into Moscow. The Finnish border buildup might mean that his cover had been blown. His mind raced, juggling all the possibilities.

  As if reading his thoughts, the dark Finn smiled and pulled out a deck of cards. "To Hamina?" he asked, shuffling.

  Riesling nodded. At least playing cards would break the tension he felt. He placed a twenty dollar bill on the table. Saarinen, he knew, gambled only with American dollars.

  "Very well, my friend," Saarinen said, digging through his pockets. With a slap, he brought forth a heap of crushed Gitanes, a dirty handkerchief, several matchbooks, a wad of soiled, sea-dampened bills, an assortment of coins of various currencies, and a lumpen piece of yellow metal on a chain.

  Riesling gasped involuntarily at the sight of the necklace.

  "All my worldly possessions," Saarinen said. He straightened out one of the cigarettes and lit it, spitting the loose tobacco onto his lap, then began sifting through the bills with stubby fingers. "I do not wish to lose the money you gave me for this trip at cards. With this new fire under the Russians' arses, I will probably need it." He patted his coat over where he had placed Riesling's envelope and laughed. "But of course, if it is an interesting game ..."

  "May I?" Riesling asked, picking up the gold necklace. It seemed hot to his touch, and with a small exhalation of air, he dropped it b
ack onto the table, where it glinted dully. The chain held a circle medallion the size of an American quarter. The gold was speckled with grime embedded in a thousand small craters. In the center was the figure of a coiled snake with a small droplet of imperfectly poured gold at the base. Riesling's hands shook as he stared at it, unable to tear his gaze away from the ornament. It seemed to glow, and the spot where it had touched Riesling's flesh felt marked somehow, as if he had been stabbed and the shock of it had sent a sudden shot of fear into the pit of his stomach.

  "It is a strange thing, that," Saarinen said quietly. "I felt it, too. Almost a power it had. I nearly threw it away." He laughed quickly. "But who throws real gold away, eh? And the snake may be an antique. I thought I would hold it until I get to Stockholm and see what it's worth."

  Riesling's heart was thudding. He had seen the medallion before. It had hung then around the neck of a man now dead, a man with extraordinary power, a man who had once saved Riesling's life.

  "Where did you get this?" His words came out in a hoarse whisper.

  Saarinen tossed a crumpled twenty into the center of the table and dealt the cards. "Podhale. Near the Tatra Mountains, in Poland."

  Riesling looked up, his face drained of color. "Where in the Podhale?"

  "A village about twenty kilometers north of Zakopane. I forget the name. Cards?"

  Riesling picked up his hand slowly. "When?" he asked.

  "What? Do you want cards or not?"

  The American forced his attention back to the cards and discarded two. "When did you pick it up? The medallion."

  "Oh, that." Saarinen laughed as he tossed down a card and dealt more from the deck. "I don't know. Two months. Maybe three." The long ash from his cigarette dropped onto his shoulder and rolled in an untidy trail down the front of his jacket. He sheared off another slice of sausage and offered the rest to Riesling, who shook his head.

  "There's a story," the captain said, belching. "Some fool runs up to me as I'm driving out of the village in a donkey cart. Of course, I was ready to shoot the bastard—it was dead night and me without any papers and my pockets full of cash—but he didn't act like any kind of military type. Arms flapping, checking behind him every other second. So I figured a family man who'd stolen something in the village for a little food money. I had to laugh." He took another swallow and gestured to his partner to get on with the game.

  Riesling breathed deeply. "He stole it from a grave, didn't he?"

  The captain cocked his head and looked at him, curious. "How did you know about the grave?"

  Riesling shook his head. A grave robber. Of course. There wasn't any other explanation. Even the Grandmaster didn't rise from beneath six feet of earth. He had seen the records himself, the photographs the Russians had gloatingly sent. Death was death, the final victor. For all the Grandmaster's miracles, he couldn't stand up to death.

  He threw in another ten dollars. "I knew the man it belonged to," he said simply. "He was killed outside of Zakopane. In the Podhale. He wore that medallion when he was buried. That was four years ago."

  Saarinen smiled. "But it couldn't be the same medal," he said indulgently.

  "It was the same. The drop of gold on the bottom of the snake. Hand poured, very old. It'll bring you a hundred or more American in Stockholm."

  Saarinen stared at him for a moment, then burst into a fit of bellowing laughter, banging the bottle on the tabletop. "Well, I'll be a son of a whore!" he shouted, brimming with mirth. "I'm going to make a dollar or two. Wonderful."

  Riesling won the hand and scraped in his winnings. Saarinen handed him the deck. "Fucking Polacks'll tell you anything," the captain said, lighting another cigarette between bursts of wheezing laughter. "You should have heard the maniac. Psst. Psst." He performed an elaborate pantomime of a man whispering secrets as he scanned the horizons for unseen law officers. Riesling smiled. "Been in the family for years, he says. Belongs to the Undead One, he says. Shot by a Russian colonel. Buried in a rock slide. Dug up and buried again. Risen from the dead, yet!" He chortled. "Pretty good, eh? The Polish Jesus Christ."

  Riesling dropped the card he was dealing. His fingers froze suspended in midair.

  The Grandmaster had been killed in a rock slide.

  "Excuse me," Riesling said, pulling the cards back to him.

  Scowling, Saarinen picked up the dropped card. It was a deuce. He tossed it back with a grin. "Just checking."

  Riesling said slowly, "He didn't happen to mention how he got the medallion, I suppose."

  "Oh, he had an answer for everything, that one. Said his son found it buried outside the house where this vampire or whatever, the Undead One, lived. With the village whore, no less!" He guffawed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. "On my mother's grave, I swear that's what he said. Mary Magdalene, no doubt. I had to give him the money after that." Hooting, he drained the bottle with a vengeance and rummaged behind the sink for another.

  "How long did he have the amulet?" Riesling asked.

  "Well, maybe it was four years," Saarinen said. He belched loudly as he returned to the table with a fresh bottle of vodka. "He said he was afraid to sell it because the Russians might find out he had it. But he'd sell it to me because I was leaving the country."

  "And the dead man?" Riesling asked.

  "You mean the Undead One?" Saarinen said mockingly. "Remember? We're talking about a Polack vampire here."

  "What happened to him?" Riesling said as he made a show of looking at his cards.

  Saarinen lowered his voice into the hushed tones of a storyteller unfolding a tale of horror and death. "The Russian colonel," he said. "He came looking for the Undead One, and the vampire vanished. The Russian killed the whore in a rage. No one ever saw the Undead One again. The Polack swears the grave was empty."

  "You're right," Riesling said lightly. "Another fairy tale."

  Saarinen leaped from the bench. "There's Gogland." He pointed to a speck of land ahead, barely visible through the porthole. He ran to the companionway and shouted, "Cast your nets!" to the men on deck. Then he blustered from the cabin as the sailors above threw out the fishing nets.

  In a few minutes he returned, bleary from the blast of morning sunlight. "For the sea patrols," he said. "We won't stay here long. No fish." He winked and sat back down heavily in front of his cards. "New deal," he said, shoving them aside.

  Riesling gathered up the cards again.

  "Not that I don't trust you, my friend," Saarinen said.

  "I understand."

  "You think it's worth a hundred American? I got it for five hundred zlotys. What's that? Twenty American, I think. That's the first time I ever made a profit on a Polack. You know, my brother married a Polack. That's why I have to go there."

  Riesling dealt. With a grunt, Saarinen put his feet up on the table and rested his head on the sink behind him. "Rising from the dead," he muttered. "Speaking English. Playing chess. Must have been drunk out of his mind."

  "What's that?" Riesling asked sharply.

  Saarinen raised by twenty. "Drunk. Drunk, I said."

  "You said chess." Suddenly Riesling was shivering.

  Saarinen smacked his lips sleepily and grinned. "Who knows? Maybe in Poland, Jesus Christ is an English-speaking vampire chess player. If you've got your own pope, you can do anything."

  Riesling tried to steady his hands. "Saarinen, I want that medallion," he said. With a start, the captain brought himself out of his doze. "I'll give you two hundred dollars for it."

  Saarinen took his time answering. He appraised the American slowly, his smiling eyes taking in the clenched jaw and sudden outpouring of sweat. "Sentimental reasons?" he asked.

  Riesling worked to keep his face a blank. "The dead man had relatives," he said. "They'd like to have it."

  "Ah, yes, for the relatives." The captain stroked the sooty growth on his chin. "Quite a large sum, my friend. The necklace must be a valuable object. To you, at least, eh?"

  His smile faded. Rie
sling's Hammerli pistol was pointed directly at his face."Two hundred dollars," Riesling said.

  Saarinen spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "My friend," he said soothingly. His satyr's smile returned. "Make it three."

  Chapter Two

  Andrew Starcher ran his hands over his face, vaguely hoping that the gesture would somehow stop the headache pounding in his brain. He read the coded message from the American consulate in Leningrad in front of him for the second time, then reached in his desk drawer for the vial of Aldril.

  "Tranquilizers?" Corfus asked, an amused smile softening his blunt Tartar features.

  "Blood pressure pills. I'm a rare spy. I'm going to die of old age, I guess." Starcher shook out two of the tablets and washed them down with cold coffee.

  At sixty-six, Andrew Starcher was a recruiting poster for the American diplomat—genteel, distinguished, his snow white hair and hawklike nose bespeaking generations of good breeding. Grimacing, he pushed the telex cable toward his assistant.

  Outside, the first snowfall was accumulating in the cobalt twilight of the Arbat district of Moscow, its graceful old homes twinkling with warm light. In that snow, Starcher knew, someone was watching.

  Someone was always watching. Any number of KGB pavement artists with their cigarette-lighter cameras and miniature radio transceivers invariably lurked around the American embassy at any given time, and the office of the cultural attaché was particularly fascinating to them.

  Starcher had known about diplomatic espionage since his first days with the CIA, but it had always seemed like a joke. Even newspapers weren't particularly interested in stories about diplomatic personnel who were chased out of a country for spying.

  Now, here he was, after twenty-five years in the field, arranging square-dancing exhibitions and tours of Moscow for American movie stars. He was vaguely embarrassed about it, even though it was only the cover for his true job as the top CIA man in the city.

  Mike Corfus bent over the rumpled cablegram, squinting as he followed Starcher's decoding markings. His bulky appearance belied Corfus's sharp intelligence. The son of Russian immigrants who'd settled on New York's seamy Lower East Side, he had worked his way through Yale and had graduated summa cum laude right into the CIA, without any of the usual family connections.